No one is more aware of the urgency of substance use problems than you. Find out how to become more involved and better informed so that your message reaches farther and has a deeper impact.

Action Steps

• Tell your story to help fight discrimination associated with addiction. Enlist family members; their stories are also powerful.
  
  
• Get involved in recovery month events in your community.
  
  
• Educate your local officials about important issues that can affect alcohol and drug addiction and recovery.
  
  
• Represent the recovery community; get involved in local government or a local coalition.
  
  
• Start a new chapter of an existing recovery organization, or if you have a unique vision, start your own.
  
  
• Volunteer at a local treatment center to help guide others through their recovery.

Resources

Faces and Voices of Recovery

Find local organizations involved in recovery in your state

Advocacy with AnonymityResources

Association of Recovery Schools

Recovery is Everywhere

Johnson Institute

America in Recovery

What others have done

Group of Recovering California Teens Share Their Stories of Addiction
A group of teen graduates from the Positive Action Center, a substance-abuse program at Chapman Medical Center in Orange County, California, have been sharing their past struggles with their peers at area high schools.

The Center, with 18 beds for adolescents and 10 for adults, is the county's only acute-care, hospital-based substance abuse treatment center.

Leading these presentations and helping the teens stay sober is the Center's manager of community relations, Mike Darnold, 61, who is a "friend in sobriety" as well as the president of the local chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and president of the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees.

"These kids have got more integrity and character than many of the grown-ups I know," said Darnold, who has been in recovery for 24 years from alcoholism. "It's an honor for me to work with them. What they do takes a lot of humility."

Darnold has brought the teens' stories to 27 high schools and middle schools, insisting that helping them also keeps him sober.

"He tells us that we are making a difference, and that's comforting" said Hannah, 17, a graduate of the Positive Action Center who started drinking in the eighth grade and later used speed, ecstasy, and cocaine. "The more I'm told that I'm helping people out, the more I want to do it."