The WholeLife Manifesto For Recovery

We support and foster non-judgmentalism, meeting clients where they are at, harm reduction, and multiple pathways of recovery.

We support and foster holistic and integrated, interventions, efforts, and activities which represent the best strategies for our clients to attain control of their lives. This is best represented by functionally addressing our multiple domains of function--physical, mental-emotional, vocational, spiritual, community, passion development. We believe that allopathic medicine and pharmacology/psycho-trophic medications should not be the sole alternative for our physical and behavioral health, and in fact, a holistic and integrated approach to health and wellness is much preferred.

We believe in the power of Peers, folks with learned experience. We believe that they can be the best ambassadors for recovery. One of our goals is to create an ongoing, growing, sustainable community, administered by Peers.

We believe very strongly in the power of community, and that a loss of community bonds and resources can be a major factor in addiction, as well as other mental illness. To that end, it will be a priority for the community to provide and/or be instrumental in creating and supporting community activities and events, as well as supporting re-entry activities

We believe that it is most important for the individual to define what recovery means for themselves, and that any strategies or pathways used, should be helpful in supporting long-term recovery;

We support and foster recreation, fun, the arts, hobbies, etc., they can be significant tools for addressing the challenges of addiction. We have focused on offering a wide slate of activities and resources in those areas. These include groups, classes, and activities in all varieties of music education, music production, recording arts, instrumental classes, songwriting, internet radio production, writing, video and media production. You can also have opportunities for passion development in the visual arts and AI.

We believe that appropriate and stimulating work/vocation can significantly aid in Recovery, and have as our goal, the creation of Business Incubators for our community. These can aid both our clients, and support our sustainability as a self-supporting entity;

We believe that individuals should have the freedom and choice to utilize multiple pathways of recovery including: abstinence only, harm reduction, moderation management, as well as medically assisted treatment (MAT);

We support and foster a diverse program of groups, interventions and classes that address the multiple domains of function, and offer ongoing peer recovery support and counseling groups. These aim to address the variety of life challenges that we all face ongoing. We also believe in the development of Employee-Owned cooperatives, a natural resource for the lower and middle class for economic development and well-being.

We believe that Recovery is possible, and that we can control our own destiny.We believe that there are many different spiritual pathways that support a positive way of life. We align ourselves with a variety of organizations and individuals whose philosophies of recovery bring hope, fresh insights, and newer perspectives to the Recovery Movement, and to what being in recovery means.

In 2019, WholeLife was created initially, as a paradigm for the treatment of Addiction and its Co-morbidities (anxiety, depression, ptsd, etc). It was the result of an amalgam of my personal battles with Addiction, my Undergrad and Graduate School education, my life experience, and my training with Faces and Voices of Recovery, a nationwide Peer-Based Recovery Organization. Coming out of Grad School, as a brand new Addiction Therapist, I noticed the dearth of creative approaches being utilized for Recovery--conventionally, consisting of no more usually, than talk therapy. Harm Reduction was often-times a taboo subject, and groups tended to be (IMHO), long and uninteresting, with rarely good outcomes. Groups like AA and NA, were somewhat more effective, but there was no oversight and supervision of the Recovery Process. In 2014, I discovered the world of Peer Support Counseling, and the efficacy of community supports. From that point on, I started to engineer the basics of what a Holistic Recovery process might look like; WholeLife was born. It is a young paradigm and open to new ideas. In fact, the WholeLife paradigm is now expanded to be a part of all of our daily lives. Please check out its basics here by examining the WholeLife Manifesto and the Executive Summaries.