The Recovery Bill Of Rights, No More Second Class Citizens

Here is The Recovery Bill Of Rights. I am not all that much of a political person, but I think the tradition of anonymity really can hurt and inhibit the recovering community advocating for rights. I use insurance companies as an example, how about politics? Everyone knows the squeaky wheel get the grease.

If tobacco, drug and alcohol companies are allowed to do what they do because they have a few well placed and funded lobbyists, imagine if the millions of people affected by alcohol and drug addiction spoke up. “They” would have to listen.

The Recovery Bill Of Rights

1.    We have the right to be viewed as capable of changing, growing and becoming positively connected to our community, no matter what we did in the past because of our addiction.

2.    We have the right, as do our families and friends, to know about the many pathways to recovery, the nature of addiction and the barriers to long-term recovery, all conveyed in ways that we can understand.

3.    We have the right, whether seeking recovery in the community, a physician’s office, and treatment center or while incarcerated, to set our own recovery goals, working with a personalized recovery plan that we have designed based on accurate and understandable information about our health status, including a comprehensive, holistic assessment.

4.    We have the right to select the services that build on our strengths, armed with full information about the experience and credentials of the people providing services and the effectiveness of the services and programs from which we are seeking help.

5.    We have the right to be served by organizations or health care and social service providers that view recovery positively, meet the highest public health and safety standards, provide rapid access to services, treat us respectfully, understand that our motivation is related to successfully accessing our strengths and will work with us and our families to find a pathway to recovery.

6.    We have the right to be considered as more than a statistic, stereotype, risk score, diagnosis, label or pathology unit – free from the social stigma that characterizes us as weak and morally flawed. If we relapse and begin treatment again, we should be treated with dignity and respect that welcomes our continued efforts to achieve long-term recovery.

7.    We have the right to health care and social services system that recognizes the strengths and needs of people with addiction and coordinates its efforts to provide recovery based care that honors and respects our cultural beliefs. This support may include introduction to religious, spiritual and secular communities of recovery, and the involvement of our families, kinship networks and indigenous healers as part of our treatment experience.

8.    We have the right to be represented by policy makers who remove barriers to education all, housing and employment opportunities once we are no longer misusing alcohol or other drugs in or on the road to recovery.

9.    We have the right to respectful, nondiscriminatory care from doctors and other healthcare providers and to receive services on the same basis as people do for any other chronic illness, with the same provisions, co-payments, lifetime benefits and catastrophic coverage and insurance, self funded/self-insured health plans, Medicare and HMO plans. The criteria of “proper” care should be exclusively between our healthcare providers and ourselves; it should reflect the severity complexity and duration of our illness and provide a reasonable opportunity for recovery maintenance.

10.    We have the right to treatment and recovery support in the criminal justice system and to regain our place in rights and society once we have served our sentences.

11.    We have the right to speak out publicly about our recovery to let others know that long-term recovery from addiction is a reality here it.

Recovery Bill of Rights Provided by Faces and Voices of Recovery