" This focus on opioid deaths is overlooking the importance of doing more to help people than preventing death. Not overdosing is an insufficient endpoint for treatment or for societal and medical interventions - it's a starting point. We fool ourselves and do a disservice to patients if we allow this to be a measure that allows us to declare success." 

-- Eric C. Strain, MD

 It's time to start the conversation about long-term recovery and peer supported recovery housing. It's an area that is not being given enough thought or the attention it deserves. Most of the hundreds of millions of dollars being distributed from court cases won as a result of the deaths of our children, friends and family is being spent on education, mental health services and harm reduction.  These are all worthy tools, however opiate addiction treatment does not end after medication assisted treatment and outpatient counseling begins. Sadly, medication does not work for everyone, does not treat the addiction nor does it work well for those with multiple addictions including alcohol. It has saved many lives through its ability to help the user manage his and her addictions and has provided hope for future reductions in these addictions. But let's not stop there. A path to abstinence is no longer presented as a viable option and in fact, you may have heard that it just doesn't work, yet many have achieved it. We strongly believe that with the proper and adequate support, it is the best possible outcome.

We need to identify more solutions because too many people are still dying. 

Although recovery communities have been found to be successful, there is little discussion about them.  The Living Sober Farm of Ulster County Project is an alternative working farm community of peers living together in a sober environment as a family unit. The Farm strategy is not meant to be a hand-out, but a functional community support system in which those whose lives are affected by addiction can reside for years, allowing their traumatized brains to heal and with time, bring normal brain function back so that lost emotional feelings such as joy and love can be relearned. The Farm's goal is to eventually be self sustaining.  We believe strongly in viewing recovery as a whole life transformation and not just a behavioral change with medical management.

This is more than a journey; it is a battle for survival. It will take a community effort to help defeat the enemy of addiction. 

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