Synopsis
Offers a hopeful, practical blueprint for building community-based recovery systems to combat addiction and save lives.
This book is about hope. Over 107,000 fellow Americans died in 2023 from drug overdoses and another 178,000 died from excessive alcohol use. Lethal illicit drugs such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and xylazine are showing up on our streets and poisoning our fellow citizens, including those who may not even intend to use these toxic synthetic drugs.
Healing a Village details a plan to build recovery capacity within a community to remove barriers and improve access to service for individuals and families seeking help from addiction. The author provides real-life examples of successful community coalitions that have delivered positive outcomes for their communities—from prevention, to harm reduction, to treatment, to recovery support. Lefebvre, the author, shares from his own experiences, “When I exited our local hospital following a 4-day detox, there were no treatment and recovery resources within my community. I was forced to travel to the west coast for treatment. That is no longer the case in my community today.” A case study of the Greater Portsmouth (NH) Recovery Coalition provides a deep dive on each of the elements of a Recovery Ready Community. The author uses personal struggles and successes in building recovery coalitions to validate the book’s thesis of hope.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Section 1: The Challenge
Chapter 1: Understanding Addiction
Chapter 2: Adverse Childhood Experiences
Chapter 3: Trauma Interrupted
Chapter 4: Resilience
Chapter 5: Understanding Recovery
Section 2: A Solution
Chapter 6: Understanding Community Coalitions
Chapter 7: Building the Coalition
Chapter 8: Why Implementing a Community Coalition Can Be So Difficult
Section 3: The Recovery Ready Community
Chapter 9: What is a Recovery Ready?
Chapter 10: Elements of a Recovery Ready Community
Chapter 11: Breaking It Down
Chapter 12: Prevention
Chapter 13: Treatment
Chapter 14: Recovery Support
Chapter 15: Other Important Topics
Section 4: Case Study – Greater Portsmouth Recovery Coalition
Other Examples
Conclusions
Resources
Templates and Toolkits
Getting Started
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Mark Lefebvre is the founder and statewide director for the Maine Recovery Friendly Workplace (RFW) program, where his focus is on building statewide capacity to recruit, train and support Maine businesses as Recovery Friendly Workplaces. In his prior role as the Pinetree Director of Community Engagement, Mark was responsible for the development of Recovery Ready Communities in the Seacoast of NH and southern ME.
Before joining the Pinetree Institute, Mark served as program director for the NH Works for Recovery program at Southern NH Services. He oversaw outreach and delivery of employment and training services to individuals and families affected by the New Hampshire opioid crisis and helped launch New Hampshire’s Recovery Friendly Workplace program. Previously, he had served on NH Governor Sununu’s Commission as a member of both the Prevention and Recovery Task Forces.
Mark Lefebvre is a person in long-term recovery from addiction and is the author of the book A Place in Time: Youth, Community & Baseball, a consultant, a radio DJ, and a podcast producer. Mark and his wife Vivian are co-founders of Safe Harbor Recovery Center in Portsmouth, NH, and live on the Seacoast of New Hampshire with their yellow lab mix rescue dog, Layla.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
