September 20, 2019
Addiction recovery path to citizenship
One of the organisers of a conference on drug and alcohol addiction says people in recovery have a huge amount to offer society.
Cutting Edge, the annual conference of the Drug and Alcohol Practitioners' Association Aotearoa-New Zealand, is on now in Auckland.
Dapaanz executive director Sue Paton says the focus is the need for a health approach to addiction and a shift away from locking people up, including a disproportionate number of Māori.
She says the conference hears not just from clinical professionals but also from peer workers who have lived experience of addiction.
"When people go into recovery they actually become the most amazing citizens because they want to give back, it's part of the recovery process that they give back so they go from being caught up in a whole raft often of offending and other behaviours and then become more pro-social than Joe citizens," Ms Paton says.
While in the past addiction was often seen as a moral or personal failure, people now understand more that there can be underlying causes in childhood or even intergenerational trauma.
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