The Audacity of Happiness: The Good Life for People in Recovery from Opiate Addiction
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Authors
Alama, Madalina
Issue Date
2024
Type
Dissertation
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on what the good life means to help-seekers and workers at an NGO in Northern Nevada that has served the community for more than two decades, which I will name Life. At Life, nurses, counselors, psychologists, medical doctors and former substance users work together towards the help-seekers’ recovery from opiate addiction. This is the ideal place to explore how people who struggle due to a chaotic relationship with opiates receive care in the form of therapy, medication, resource identification, healthcare information, parenting, nutrition, cooking, reproductive health classes, yoga and arts trainings, and how simultaneously they give each other support by sharing past and present experiences pertaining to all the walks of life they find relevant. Moreover, staff and help-seekers often give one another support outside the structured settings of therapy, medication dispensation and group therapy, connecting while sharing ways to face up to present challenges, many pertaining to pregnancy, birth, mothering, childcare, addiction, and discussing the relationship between past and present challenges as well as hopes. The staff also assess each help-seeker’s individual and changing needs by organizing and attending family events designed to support women. In these settings women help-seekers, their children, their siblings, parents, spouses, romantic partners can come together and talk about their lives, experiences with addiction, childcare, and ways to think about the future.