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Author: Ty LaFountain

“Creating safe places creates a healing culture!”

I write this blog for the first annual Substance Use Disorder Treatment Month (Treatment Month). SAMHSA recently announced that January 2025 would be the launch of Treatment Month. According to SAMHSA “this serves to support: people contemplating or seeking help for substance use, practitioners treating or considering treating substance use disorder, friends, family and loved ones of people with substance use conditions; by raising awareness of treatment. SAMHSA seeks to: eliminate stigma surrounding treatment, including medications used to treat substance use disorders, encourage those on their treatment and recovery journey, and promote best practices such as screening, intervention, and treatment of substance use disorders by health care professionals.

Crow Dog

The United States has the highest incarceration and recidivism rates in the world. Our criminal legal system often causes more harm than good. Yet, we continue to believe this is the best way to address crime in our country. Why do we do this? As a society we have never been shown any other way, so we don’t realize that there are other options aside from punitive measures, such as incarceration. Restorative Justice is just one of the many ways that we can work to better implement justice and to get rid of the inequities that exist within our criminal legal system. Restorative Justice is an Indigenous principal of holding people accountable for a harm they have caused by promoting healing and restoration for the entire community as a whole. When a harm is caused, there are more people affected than just the victim and the offender. Friends, family, neighbors, innocent bystanders, coworkers and whole communities may be affected by the harm caused.

Tips for Celebrating the Holidays in Recovery

We all know that the Holiday season can be one of the hardest and most vulnerable times for people in recovery. It may remind us of our pasts and how different our lives are today. I believe this is also a great opportunity to take the time to be grateful for the changes we have made and how different our lives are today. Holidays may hold negative experiences for some or remind us of better times. We may not be able to spend the Holidays with the people we yearn to spend them with and in some cases may have to spend them with people we don’t want to spend them with today. As people in recovery we have learned different ways of coping in different situations and  will share some of my tips and secrets for Holiday recovery.

What kind of role model do I want to be today?

Today, before I act, I often ask myself what kind of role model do I want to be today? Six years ago, before I was in recovery, I never gave this much thought, or any thought really. I also didn’t realize the effect that my actions had on those around me, especially people like my nieces or nephews. I was about two years in recovery and was hanging out with my 12-year-old nephew, we were talking about life when he looked at me and said “Uncle Ty, do you remember when I wouldn’t share my taco with you one time, and you grabbed it and smashed it? You used to be mean!” I was absolutely blown away and devastated at the same time. I never realized the impact I had on him or the negative role model I was being. It was at that point in my life I decided from that point on I was going to be a positive role model for him and all the people around me.

I am lovable, I am lovable, I am lovable!

In recognition of Train Your Brain Day on October 13th, I would like to share one of my secrets that I keep in my toolbox and have incorporated them into my Wellness Recovery Action Plan as something that I must do on a daily basis. This is not something that I have made up or can claim any credit for, but merely a tool that was shown to me early in my recovery that I have continued to do for years.