Recovery Month 2020: Why It’s Important for Everyone This Year
Finding the Voice of Recovery
September 2020 is the 31st year honoring Recovery Month.
Honoring this month is important because it helps to fight back against stigma around mental health and addiction. People with heart diseases, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, and other diseases and those that support them have loud “voices”— large supportive communities with platforms from which they can raise awareness and funds. We must do the same for mental health and addiction diseases; find the voice of recovery to help paint a different picture of these diseases.
It is still uncommon to hear stories of recovery in mental health. When it comes to addiction, there are even less examples. It is much more common to read about overdoses and other negative reflections on these diseases. This paints a certain picture. It says that for people experiencing addiction diseases, there really isn’t a way to recover like a person with cancer or diabetes. And if there isn’t a way for them to recover, then why bother helping?
Why bother trying to find the right level of care for people? Why bother doing research about evidence based and effective treatments? It’s not like cancer and diabetes, they are just flawed people so why bother treating them with compassion and empathy. Why bother at all?
This is the importance of Recovery Month.
It is a month for us to be open and louder about what recovery is. It is a month we can take to reflect on the achievements people with addiction, substance use and mental health diseases and those that treat, care for, and support them. It is a month that we can celebrate personal and familial achievements in making efforts towards recovery. It is a month were we can take the time to research improvements made in the delivery of treatment for people with these diseases. It is a month that we can take to remember and honor those we have lost to the struggles of these still often misunderstood diseases and commit to doing better so that less people struggle with finding care that will work for them.
More people need to need to know these stories exist and that there is a voice of strong support backing them up.
People can get better.
More and more evidence based treatments are being researched and developed. Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) is becoming more widely used. These medicines, such as Suboxone and Vivitrol, can help people manage their addiction by managing the symptoms of substance use — reducing the effect of substances like alcohol and opiates on the brain. More awareness is being raised for Naloxone (Narcan) which is a potentially life saving resource that can reverse the effects of an overdose. Everyone can get trained in how to use Narcan, not just healthcare professionals! The more awareness that gets raised about Recovery in general, will only help our communities grow stronger.
The more we talk about about it, the stronger the voice grows and the more people become equipped to help and save lives.
This year, everyone needs to hear the message.
The increases in the amount of substance use, overdoses, and mental health concerns is staggering. We have been affronted by so many traumatic events this year. Our usual coping skills, like social connectivity and activities, have been very restricted. Feeling connected to one another is largely missing and that may be contributing to feelings of anxiety, fear, frustration and depression. And we fight these feelings, bury them and stay silent. But it is ok to feel them; it is human to feel them. It’s ok to talk about them. It’s also ok to need help. It’s even more ok to ask for that help. Asking for help isn’t weak, in fact it takes courage and strength to do so. There are people out there in many different forms, both personal and professional, who want to help. No one is immune from mental health concerns.
You are deserving of help. Give yourself permission to accept it.
While 2020 may feel like a lost year, we can still learn from it. So for this Recovery Month, take time to understand where your own mental health is at. Learn about the resources that are available to you. Learn what self-care is and how you can incorporate it into your life. Learn just how common mental health and addiction is. Learn that it is ok to need, seek and ask for help. We can learn how to take care of ourselves and how we can take care of others. Most of all we can learn to talk openly about these concerns and show people that they do matter. The voice of recovery is yours and everyones because recovery is for all of us. The louder we are together, the stronger we become.
You matter. You are worthy of recovery. Recovery is possible.
