Building Recovery Capital Through StrengthsAdd Your Heading Text Here
In a recent episode of Reduce The Stigma, Whitney interviewed Kurt Lebeck, a recovery scientist and PhD candidate, who delved into the concept of recovery capital as a cornerstone of his work in behavioral health. Kurt’s journey from achieving recovery to becoming a leader in recovery-oriented program development is rooted in his belief that recovery capital—comprising internal, external, and social resources—is not just an outcome but a process. Through his innovative RCADE Tools, Kurt empowers individuals and peer support workers to identify and leverage their strengths, enhancing their recovery journey.
Kurt’s focus extends to empowering marginalized communities by building coalitions across diverse groups. His work in New Mexico, a state known for its rich cultural diversity, has reinforced his belief in the critical role of community in recovery. Kurt emphasizes that recovery is attainable for everyone, even without traditional treatment methods, by recognizing and utilizing personal strengths. His approach offers a fresh perspective on recovery, centering on empowerment and the unique pathways each individual can take.
Click here for the episode’s full transcript.
About Our Guest:
Over the last several years, Kurt has worked with several of New Mexico’s behavioral health programs, enhancing recovery from substance use and co-occurring disorders. Through innovative tools and programs, he has bolstered the capabilities of peer support workers (PSWs) and community support workers (CSWs). Kurt’s experience, including roles as a consumer, PSW, NIAAA predoctoral fellow, and clinical social worker, underpin his approach to supporting clients across the continuum of care — from withdrawal management to sustained recovery to reduced harm.
Central to his strategy is the concept of recovery capital, which encompasses the resources individuals can draw upon to initiate and sustain recovery. Kurt’s methods aim to accelerate recovery and reduce harm by explicitly educating consumers on recovery capital — enabling individuals to lead fulfilling lives in recovery. He has developed a recovery capital assessment tool and a coaching method, empowering PSWs and CSWs to empower their clients to harness their strengths and navigate their recovery journey effectively.
Kurt extends his expertise beyond New Mexico, offering nationwide consultancy and research services to behavioral health organizations. His current initiatives include developing a low-threshold buprenorphine program and conducting mixed-methods research for projects like the SXSW MHTTC. His work spans various domains, including program design and implementation, feasibility studies, and quality improvement.
His research interests focus on recovery science, harm reduction, organizational health, program R&D, and implementation science.
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Transcript
Whitney (00:50)
Hello and welcome to Recovery Conversations. Today I’m talking with Kurt Lebeck, a substance use and co -occurring disorders recovery scientist specializing in recovery -oriented program development and implementation. Kurt draws on his own and others’ lived experiences of recovery, resilience, and flourishing, including managing chronic pain, to improve behavioral health programs and policies. He incorporates organizational, social, and individual change theories to enhance the responsiveness of treatment providers and behavioral health systems to the needs of those in their care. Kurt is the president of the New Mexico Society for Addiction Medicine, a chapter of ASAM. He teaches social policy at the Smith College School for Social Work in Massachusetts and is entering his third year as a PhD candidate in National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Training Fellow at Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Massachusetts. Wow, Kurt, you have a lot going on, and I am honored that you took time out of your busy schedule to join me today.
Kurt (02:00)
Well, thank you very much for having me. I’m looking forward to
Whitney (02:04)
I am as well. We’ve actually been connected on LinkedIn for a bit and I’ve been able to follow your work, but this is the first time we’re getting to talk and I’m excited because I saw that you are really moving and working a lot in the recovery capital space. And I’d like to ask you, know, let’s hear how you came to where you are today. You know, you’ve gone through numerous schooling programs, you’re doing a lot, but where did it begin?
Kurt (02:32)
Yeah, thank you. And it’s really, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Yeah. So as many of these stories do, this begins in my own mental health and addiction struggles, which really began in probably my late teens, but didn’t become, I would say really problematic until my late twenties and thirties. And the reason I go ahead and locate the beginning of this odyssey there is because I didn’t study behavioral health or psychology or medicine or anything of its kind when I was a teenager. And in my early 20s, I studied fine art. And my hope was to become an artist and make beautiful things. And in order to sort of sustain myself in college, I worked in the trades. worked, I learned a lot growing up. My family. My uncle has a farm in Illinois and my dad is an engineer and had a shop in New Mexico. So I learned a lot of trades growing up, everything from electrician to carpenter to everything else. And I was able to sort of parlay that into work as a college student. And so my 20s were very busy, but I was building things, fancy things, if you will. I was, my specialty was metal fabrication and fine art metal fabrication and architectural metal fabrication. And the reason this matters is because the trades are pretty notorious for being great places to get injured, which would happen to me later. But also they’re great places to hang out with other folks working in the trades and there’s a lot of drinking and hanging out and we had a lot of fun. And again, I would say, I would describe my 20s as, you it wasn’t problematic substance use or problematic mental health at that point. It was what I would call like developmentally normal, at least now with the education that I have subsequently gotten, developmentally normal kind of drinking and behavior. And then in my early 30s, I would get into a couple of accidents. Work -related accidents, just the sort of hazards of the trades. One of which caused a really pretty serious damage to my right leg. It severed my Achilles tendon. It was really quite gruesome. Yeah, and so it got stitched back together. I have most of the functioning there. And then I also would strain my back and need to have surgery on my lower back. And so those kinds of events really sort of catapulted me from, I would say, regular developmentally appropriate use to chaotic and hazardous use, where I was using substances really to blunt pain and to manage some very difficult other social consequences that were arising. And so the origin of this sort of odyssey I’ve been on for the last eight years really begins almost 20 years ago in that sense because I get injured and then, you I develop a pretty severe addiction, you know, to alcohol, opioids, benzos and a number of other things, you know, all the while trying to sort of manage a small business that I was running in New York City where we were building, again, still really amazing things for people. You know, I had some really incredible clients. I worked for Paul McCartney, one of the Beatles, built a staircase. Yeah, so if you’re ever at his house and you see his stair, you can say, know exactly. Yeah, so I’d worked for these really famous, famous people. He’s just one of them. And it was a really the so the demands on that that level, the quality that goes into that are really high. You can’t really mess around. And with
Whitney (06:29)
Wow. all the time, yeah.
Kurt (06:53)
My injuries and this need to basically try to just stay right, just to stay even keeled, I was using more and more and it was becoming more more problematic. my ability to maintain the business and sustain myself and my family, we’re slipping. And so one of the things that would happen is in the sort of deluge, if you will, of all of these problems. You know, as a small business person, I was paying for my own health insurance, right, and that of my families, and paying at that point, you know, for very good quality coverage. And, you know, I’m going to these experts and I’m feeling, you know, downright suicidal, frankly, because I was so stressed out by my inability to perform at the level that was expected of me and so stressed out about money that I just didn’t know what to do. And so one of the thoughts that occurred to me as I think it does many people who are in that situation is it might just be easier if I checked out. And so that would be one of my several hospital admissions. And then…I would, and I was always voluntary. I always went in on my own, recognizing that I was having this, you know, these really pretty significant problems and I was managing to keep my health insurance. So, scraping by, but you know, putting huge amounts of money on my Amex business card, you know, that kind of thing. And ultimately what would happen is that I would go to these, I would get inpatient status, you know, and be in a psychiatric stabilization unit you know, a week or 10 days. And then I get discharged into the community with, you know, a psychiatrist and a bunch of prescriptions. And maybe somebody would say, hey, you should go check out an AA meeting, or maybe you should do some IOP intensive outpatient program. And so I do, I did a lot of those things and I took the prescriptions and I tried to do everything that was sort of prescribed to me by what I now know is the medical model of disease care. And I think it was, I know these doctors and social workers and others were really trying to do their best with the resources they had. And I had to, like I said, I was paying for this, I don’t remember if it was platinum or gold or something, but this really good quality insurance. So I had like access to the best care in New York City, which is not too shabby for most people. But when it came to addiction care and to pain management, you know, I was caught up in that sort of middle stage of the opioid crisis when they were really starting to crack down on things like Oxycontin and the prescribing of it. But they didn’t see a problem with prescribing me a bunch of fentanyl patches to maintain myself. They didn’t see a problem prescribing me a lot of benzodiazepines and so on at the time. And now, of course, we know that that is contraindicated. So yeah, that’s sort of where I get a lot of my energy for this work. Yeah, it’s the origin.
Whitney (10:21)
That there’s so much there. And I appreciate you mentioning the trades. That is a subset of our, you know, workforce that, like you said, there is a high risk of injury and not every person in a trades position has that high quality healthcare such as you had, which can mean then that either they can’t afford to address it or they maybe don’t have the ability to take time off to rest because of how their employment arrangement is. And so that can lead to becoming dependent on different medications and maybe obtaining alternative ways just to be able to get to work, to do the job that causes you pain, that you need then the medication and that horrible vicious cycle. So thank you for mentioning your experience in that world. I don’t think it gets as much notice as perhaps it should.
Kurt (11:23)
Yeah, I agree. I would like to think a very generous employer, all of my full -time employees had healthcare, but it was extraordinarily expensive. And I know they didn’t take advantage of it because as a sort of small business, I wasn’t in position to pay them for time off at that point. I only had a handful or a dozen employees. I did work with as many as like 40 at one point, but you know, a lot of those were subcontractors and different kinds of contractors. Um, so I never had to meet that threshold that you have to, where you give everybody the same, uh, insurance, um, or the same benefits. But I did give them that and, and they didn’t take advantage of it. And many of them would probably mostly because you afford to take time off, especially in a city, I mean, anywhere, but in a city like New York, where the cost of living is increasingly high relative to the average income of a blue collar or a tradesperson, you just can’t stop working, unless you have paid time off. And that was not something that I could afford to provide at the time.
Whitney (12:46)
Great, absolutely. it’s almost, it’s a good segue then into recovery capital because employment and those types of resources can be a part of someone’s recovery capital. So can we start with what is your definition of recovery capital, not the official one?
Kurt (13:07)
Mm. Well, that’s a little trickier. I know that it’s the official one. But I think the work that I’ve been doing has really made me appreciate how much recovery capital is both sort of an object or an endpoint or an outcome. But what I’m most interested in is recovery capital accrual, which is how we build recovery capital. And so in that sense, as a sort of operational definition, I think of it less as an outcome and more as a process. So for me, it is the process of developing resources, internal, external resources, social resources, my own resources, and also being aware of and getting connected to the resources in the community. And so those are all, you know, it’s sort of flipping and…and playing a little bit of semantics there, but it’s really about how can we accelerate the acquisition of those resources. And a lot of this work, just in my experience, sort of shows this as well, isn’t something that somebody can do for you. It’s something you have to learn how to do on your own. And one of the things that I think I take a lot of inspiration from is a guy by name of Paulo Freire, whose name I can never pronounce correctly, but he was a Brazilian activist and most of his work was in Brazil. And he kind of coined this term called, Portuguese it’s contienchão, but in our sense, I think it might be like critical consciousness. And it’s this idea that we become aware through literacy, through learning of relative position and what is going on in the world around us. And the injustices there also. And then because of that awareness, we’re able to act on it. So I think of the process of recovery capital accrual as really trying to light the spark and helping folks recognize that they have a part to play in this, that there are a lot of systemic reasons that they are in this position that they’re in specifically when we’re talking about addiction, nobody wakes up and chooses, right? We always hear that. But what happens is we often wake up in, whether it’s the trades or in some other industry or some other part of the world where we don’t have a choice. Like the only opportunity for us is like, I’m gonna get well by taking some medication, legal or illegal, who cares? Like I need to have one.
Whitney (15:56)
I have to.
Kurt (15:58)
Otherwise I am not gonna be able to do my job or whatever. And so I think, you know, it matters a lot that people start to recognize that these, the environment in which they’re in, which can be a resource, but can also be a negative kind of recovery capital. So I think about recovery capital really is that kind of process of how do we become aware of it in our environments? What it is, is less important as much as it matters that I start to mobilize it and recognize my own strengths to do
Whitney (16:33)
So I hear a lot of, or what I’m taking is really the need for that internal reflection and identification. Is that kind of accurate?
Kurt (16:44)
Yeah, think I definitely am inspired. So yeah, I went on to study clinical social work. And so there’s a lot of at Smith College, which is very psychodynamically oriented. So we think a lot about drives and we think a lot about insight and we think a lot about what motivates people within their family system and so on. But I think part of it is that it isn’t just like the insight, because I don’t want to confuse that with like, some people have better insight than other. It’s really an opportunity to sort of be able to assess the conditions in which you’re in and think of it as, and to learn the skill of discernment, right? It’s not just about, you know, this is good for me. It’s like, why is this, you have to balance your resources. Like certain things are gonna give you more advantage than others, right? Certain strengths that I have are gonna give me a better chance at sustaining my recovery than your strengths, right? Your strengths are unique to you. And so I think a lot of this is about trying to help folks recognize what their sort of unique strength matrix is and say, wow, that’s really cool. Like I have all this stuff.
Whitney (17:54)
Right.
Kurt (18:09)
And I can take this stuff and I can figure out how to use it to get housing, right? Get transportation. Maybe it’s to move to a better neighborhood, something along those lines. But whatever it is, it’s about recognizing that, you know, those, the consequences, getting housing, proper nutrition, everything else, that outcome, which is a kind of recovery capital, doesn’t happen.
Whitney (18:15)
Yeah.
Kurt (18:36)
Because you started out with the same amount of recovery capital, right? Like we have to figure out how to build it. So
Whitney (18:40)
Right. Yes. And I imagine what I mean, putting together is we all have recovery capital within us just innately because we all have different strengths. And it reminds me of a group that we would run when I had a program in a jail, which was like resource sharing and the, knowledge base of individuals who have been through this different systems and who have mental health needs and substance use needs, their awareness of where to go for what was phenomenal. It was way better than anything I could have found on Google. And then, you know, it was the inside tips and the resourcefulness that they had and the ability to say, yes, that may not work, but if you approach it this way. And I think, you know, that strengths based approach not only is going to just get the ball rolling, but also builds up that sense of self -worth for individuals who’ve often been told that they’re not worth anything.
Kurt (19:46)
Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t say it better myself. And one of the things that happens particularly, and this is why I focus most of my work on peers, I like to educate social workers. That’s a fun job. And I, you know, I believe that they’re definitely part of the solution. But most of my work so far, the last four years or so has been with peer support workers and community health workers. And the reason is, is that if we can facilitate opportunities for peers, to sit with other people experiencing those problems and have those conversations, they immediately start building recovery capital, right? Because they’re identifying explicitly the resources in their community that the social worker or the medical provider have no idea, right? And one of the things that we know is that the social determinants of health…which we can think of recovery capital was really the sort of antidote, if you will, to negative social determinants. Yeah, it’s an awesome way to think about it because the social determinants really drive a lot of what makes use chaotic, dangerous, hazardous, et cetera, right? Somebody who has relatively good access to a clean supply has a much better chance of survival than somebody who doesn’t. And that’s determined, right, politically. So thinking about that, getting all those people into the room and having them sort of hash that out, even if their objective isn’t sobriety or being clean or whatever, whatever their objective is, they’re gonna start hearing about these resources. And so they’re gonna start taking better care of themselves simply by knowing what’s available to them. And again, we know that that kind of health behavior drives outcomes more so than does the engagement with the medical prescriber or the social worker. Because it’s in their life all the time, right? Like they meet with the, when I was training to be a therapist, I’d see people maybe once a week at the most, right? I don’t know how many hours there are a week, but it’s not very much. Whereas if you are sort of, if you’re embedded in a community of other people who are thinking about all of these other resources,
Whitney (21:47)
Yes.
Kurt (22:07)
You’re embedded in that 24 seven and you’re certainly conscious of it whenever you’re not sleeping. And so that is a lot more time to be working on yourself and the opportunities you could have than you ever could have even in an intensive outpatient program, nine, 12 hours a week or even 20 hours a
Whitney (22:29)
Right. Well, and it’s the applying it in the daily life, you know, that’s the part that a lot of times treatment misses is, yeah, we’ve sat here, we’ve processed, we’ve, you know, challenged negative cognitions and things like that. What are we doing for the 23 hours a day that they’re not in group or in a session? And so being able to say, here’s what you can tap into, that’s gonna, in my opinion, be the difference maker and really empower that person to be able to say, okay, I know what it takes. I know where I can go. And then being able to do it. Whereas, you know, maybe we just say, here’s a list of resources. Well, that can even be overwhelming to have to search through a list. And so like, we’ve got to look at this different approach. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing. You’re in let’s talk about the peers that you’re working with. Are you training them Building recovery capital?
Kurt (23:28)
Yeah. So what I’ve done is I’ve so for the last four years, I’ve been working in New Mexico. I started about seven years ago, like I said, as a peer. And then I shifted and went back to school. And then about four years ago, when I graduated with my MSW, I needed I needed a gig. And I was fortunate enough to be pretty deep in the recovery community in Albuquerque in New Mexico, I had been, what do they call it? I’d been leading groups of outreach folks for one of the anonymous organizations and going out to really far flung parts of the state. And so I met literally hundreds of people in early recovery and various stages of recovery. And through one of those chance meetings, I got introduced to somebody who was working in the state and they were really interested in building up peer supports. And so they gave me a job as an evaluator of a program. And so I started evaluating this program and it wasn’t one of my own creation, but I started evaluating it and observing what was going really well and what wasn’t. And one of the things that I took away was that like peers really want to do this work and they don’t have a lot of tools to do there’s this sort of expectation that, you have lived experience, you know what you’re doing. And, you know, after a 40 hour, not even 40 hour training, you’re somehow now able to command a group and, you know, run a group and, and be an effective person. And I think that to an extent, that’s definitely true. Like we didn’t need the certification process or any of these other things to make peer support a legitimate, valuable part of the process. But I think when we start thinking about the problem of efficiency and the reality that 95 % of the people in the country don’t even recognize that they have a substance use problem yet do or likely do, at least according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, that is a huge gap between what we can do and what, know, right now we’re doing, right? And also given the fact that 70 or 80 % of people don’t actually ever even make it to treatment or an AA meeting or an NA meeting. So we need some way to get into the community and get deep into that and build that recovery infrastructure more quickly than I would say the current organic system of AA meetings and NA meetings and so on. Part of that is the professionalization of the peer support worker. So I know that there are sort of pros and cons to that, and I’m here for that discussion maybe another time. But my point being is like, I want to see peers be able to engage folks effectively using their lived experience. I think this is key. If a peer finds themselves in any scenario in which they’re not able to use their lived experience, they should quit not being a peer support worker. But what I’m doing is I’m helping them. So I created this thing, which is called the RCADE Tools. And that’s Recovery Capital Assessment, Development, and Engagement Tools. And I thought it was cute to call it Arcade because it sounds like the game. And I was all very much inspired by a thing I did, as I mentioned earlier, at MIT, which was this how to innovate and commercialize.
Whitney (27:04)
Yeah.
Kurt (27:16)
Products to help with the substance use crisis. And so during that, I kind of came up with this name and I was like, yeah, that would be a much, that’s a much clever, more clever name. And I figured I could actually turn it into an app and so on. But anyway, in the meeting, what it is, is it is an assessment. And I look, I have, I teach peers how to deliver this assessment. And right now it’s got 48 statements. And they, on the personal capital side,
Whitney (27:29)
Yeah.
Kurt (27:43)
There are statements like people at work, where I volunteer, go to school, or spend most of my time, support my recovery. Oh, that’s a social capital example. And then you rate that one to six. And there’s 48 of those statements in individual, social, and community capital. And then you basically get a score. And this is a lot like a lot of the other instruments out there. But what I’m interested in is less about scoring it, I love the idea of collecting the data and I think that’s down the road for me and my team. But for now, what it’s about is the peers that I work with get a score and then they can engage in some very quick coaching and say, what of these things matters to you most? Why? And then we take the sort of why, that’s really one of the things as we know in psychotherapy training. The most important thing to get folks to like motivate to change is like they have to have a reason of their own. And if they don’t, know, sometimes, you know, the nudge from the judge is great, but usually what happens is even with that, they realize, you know, I need, I need to do this for me. Otherwise it’s not gonna really happen. And so I don’t mean to say it’s great. By the way, that’s how it came out. Yeah, I don’t want more carceral solutions. I want fewer, but I think I want to acknowledge that sometimes many, I shouldn’t say sometimes, many people have found their way into recovery through those carceral systems and they are the lucky ones because some have not found that way and have found the other way or the other side of that, which can be really tragic. But we take the score and then we work with the client and say,
Whitney (29:06)
I know. Right? Right.
Kurt (29:34)
So what’s most important to you here and which of these strengths, the things that you gave a six or a five or even a four or two, do you think you can use to help you like achieve that goal? And then we coach them on how to do that. And we use a lot of motivational interviewing, at least when there’s some ambivalence, but just some straight up coaching techniques like encouragement and enthusiasm and bring your own lived experience into that. I always tell the peers, I tell them my story, I make sure that they understand where I’m coming at, this from and why. And then I do this assessment using my own story sort of as background to make it live a little, right? We can take these assessments and I think there’s value in all of that. But I think when somebody gives you an assessment and then coaches you a little bit and not what to say, because these are all strengths, these are all things. We don’t have it. It’s not like you get penalized, right? But what we’re saying is like, if you have some of these strengths, if you have enough energy, and this is a bark 10 question, which is the brief assessment of recovery capital, I took 10 of those out of that as well, just so that there would be some fidelity to that measure. But if I have enough energy to complete the task I set for myself, right? Like that’s a strength. And some people don’t recognize it as something that they have, but that they can use to get
up every day and take care of some of the smaller steps to getting towards their bigger goal. And so that’s what that’s really about. It’s just thinking about how do we get some motivation.
Whitney (31:16)
I was thinking about the MI readiness scale whenever you were talking about that and just the ability to help the person apply what they already have to different situations. I’m a very visual thinker and I’m imagining a person who has this like ring of keys, right? And they think that that key, that strength only fits the one, But what you’re doing is being able to say that key can also open this lock and this lock and this lock. And I think that’s just amazing because people, we always look at what we’re not good at. We focus on our weaknesses and we don’t always realize that some of our strengths can be applied in different ways. And I think that’s phenomenal because those are lifelong skills then that the person will
Kurt (32:12)
Thank you for that. think that’s a great analogy, the keys, because it’s true. I call it the recovery capital building program where I’m doing this in New Mexico. But the idea is that by being explicit about this, by saying, look, this is your recovery capital, this is your stuff, this is you, and we’re going to call it what it is and we’re going to name it, we empower because all of a sudden they realize, I’m not empowering them. They’re empowering themselves through their own sort of recognition. And so that’s kind of what I mean by the critical consciousness. They become aware of how these pieces can play out in their life. And then they start to recognize by, because we take the individual social and community levels and separate them and make that very explicit, they recognize that these individual strengths that they might have an affect the community resources that they can access. And they also can then recognize that it goes the other way, that the community level resources that they might have access to can affect how they build social capital, right? Because if you don’t have the opportunity to go to certain kinds of meetings and build a network, a recovery network that’s appropriate for you. So for example, people who for whatever reason don’t like AA or NA, for example, If they can’t find an alternative that still serves that social piece and helps them build that social capital, their chances are diminished. One of the things that I’m also really interested in has become my parallel path is thinking about why it is that recovery generally has become whiter in the last five or 10 years preliminary data out when I look at the NISDA, the National Survey of Drug Use and Health that shows it becoming a little bit whiter over time. And the question is, like, and there’s more people going into recovery, but what it’s also showing, at least if we take this sort of preliminary result seriously, is it’s showing that more black and brown folks are leaving recovery as a portion. And so I think about that a lot because I think is happening is that I think some of these environments are not ideal, right? Or folks who have been minoritized at different levels, whatever that level is, and that they’re less and less inclined to participate in these spaces. And so what I’m doing with the arcade tools is I’m really saying that’s all well and good. know, AA might work for some folks, whatever that is, great, but if that doesn’t work for you, what does? We gotta find you something that works for you because what we know is that most of the benefit of 12 -step programs is the participation, the active social participation in the community itself. So without those kinds of active participation opportunities, folks, really, it is a disadvantage.
Whitney (35:04)
Great. Yeah, absolutely. The community has to be one where they feel safe. And if it’s a community that is not reflective of who they are, if they are the only Black or Brown person in the room, then there’s all of the intersectionality coming to play as well. And so we need to ensure that those opportunities are there for each person to feel safe and with people who they can truly connect with. So it’s great to hear that you’re looking at that.
Kurt (36:02)
Yeah, no, if I may, I’m glad you brought up the word intersectionality because one of my professors here at Brandeis is Anita Hill. And you can’t do better than that, right? she and I, or at the class I took with her last term, I really got steeped in critical race theory and thinking about intersectionality and thinking about coalition building. And one of the things
Whitney (36:05)
Please. Great.
Kurt (36:31)
I’ve realized is that recovery for folks who don’t necessarily fit into one of the mainstream. So if you accept the sort of premise as I do that there are a lot of unique pathways, maybe as many as there are people, but there are also some rivers in which many people might take a unique path, but there’s a stream, if you will, that a lot of folks are basically able to sort of flow along. So if I take that perspective and think about how do we build those streams, it’s really kind of like coalition building and political activism. And what that looks like is people with different diverse identities and characteristics or intersections of identity coming together, maybe not necessarily with people that look exactly like them or are the same as sexual orientation, but maybe share other facets of that identity other intersections and building a coalition so that they can have the same kinds of opportunities that some of these mainstream, literally mainstream provide, right? And so I like to think about this sort of arcade tools as a means of trying to help facilitate that. And part of the things, one of the great benefits of working in New Mexico for this has been that it’s a very culturally diverse
Whitney (37:41)
Yeah.
Kurt (37:59)
Ethnically diverse state. You know, there are folks who are coming from the Pueblos, from the reservations, there are folks coming from little towns and cities that have been around longer than those here in New England. I’m in New England right now. But that is a kind of historical arc and relationships that is pretty rare in this world today. But in New Mexico, we find all these folks coming together in recovery. And it is possible to sort of build these coalitions along diverse lines if we name it and we get explicit about it. we aren’t to, what’s the word? guess we don’t treat, I guess if we have to accept that idea that there are these pathways, multiple pathways and that many of them have a lot to offer us.
Whitney (39:02)
Yeah. Wow. I’m excited to hear how Arcade continues to grow. am a big fan of peer support, of course. mean, Reduce the Stigmas is sponsored by Strait of Care, which is all about peers. And I think that one of the components we haven’t yet touched on is that not only are you building the recovery capital of the client or patient, you’re also building the recovery capital of the peer. It even makes me think like the ability to look at the data because that’s what you’re having. You’re having data as an output from the assessments and then apply that, analyze it and apply it. That is an amazing skill for peers if they ever decide to pursue a different career. like, so they’re right there, you’re building it like everyone who comes into contact with it is growing.
Kurt (39:54)
Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you said that because I think one of the things that not only rebuilding their skill set to provide, you know, increasing their facility with MI and everything else, but we are giving them the disability to coach people around goals or sort of facilitating it. But moreover, they are giving me something, which is to say, like of the 48 statements that I’ve got, like I said, 10 are from the bark 10. But the other 38 were derived almost exclusively by people’s lived experience. Granted, some of mine, of course, but also by many of the folks I’ve worked with in Santa Fe and now Gallup, New Mexico and Albuquerque, New Mexico, but also in Boston, Massachusetts and where else? San Diego, California. I have all these friends all around the country who are peers, peer supporters. And so we have all these statements coming from, and I may have edited them or have fine tuned them and so on, but none of this, this whole thing isn’t just me saying, I have an idea. It’s really trying to draw out from the peer support workers and the community health workers that I’ve been working with, whether it’s in the rooms or these professionals at these treatment organizations or whatever, and have them tell me what’s worked for them. And so I think the assessment, looks very different than a lot of the other assessments. It’s a lot. There are some peculiar, like, peculiarly specific things. You know, like, for example, like going back to the New Mexico context, but one of the individual strengths is I feel connected to my ancestors, culture, religion, or higher power, right? And so instead of saying, you have to have a higher power. When people are early recovery, the higher power concept can be a little confusing. And instead of saying that, I’m saying like, no, your ancestor, what about your ancestors? You know, that’s an opportunity there. There are many people, you know, that I know from different diverse backgrounds who think about their ancestors more so than they think about a God or even a religion.
Whitney (42:14)
Right, right.
Kurt (42:15)
And so being able to sort of say, this is another way to be in communication with a spiritual, something bigger than yourself is, and it’s just fine. It’s just as good. I think it’s really important. And I wouldn’t have gotten that, you know, had I not been listening carefully to the peer support experience.
Whitney (42:37)
That’s the cultural considerations that need to be present in everything because we can’t apply one religion or mindset or what have you. So that’s wonderful to hear that it’s approached that way. And it just sounds like you’re really building the tool from the voices for the people who’s speaking for it. And that’s really amazing and typically, you know, the way that these innovations occur. So it’s wonderful to hear, you know, of course you have lived experience, you’re also utilizing the lived experience people have shared with you. And I hope more innovations in our space continue to do so.
Kurt (43:21)
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and I am using also traditional academic research tools with this. My corn box alpha was 0 .88. I know these things, so I have all these other resources that I’m bringing to this as well. And that’s been a really great experience. But yeah, I wouldn’t be anywhere without those voices. This is what happened.
Whitney (43:46)
So exciting to just learn about. And as we’re getting ready to wrap up, I want to ask you one of, ask you the question I ask everyone. If people walk away from listening to our discussion and can only take one thing with them, what would you like it to
Kurt (44:05)
I think that we touched on this, but I think the idea that you can achieve recovery or remission or whatever you want to call it without treatment or without going to an AA meeting or an NA meeting or any of the other hundreds of fellowships is possible. But it’s a lot easier if you know what your strengths are and you start to use them. And so I guess the one thing would Like you have strengths, all of us do. I’ve never met anybody who’s filled out one of these forms and we’ve got a few hundred of them now who just, you know, really didn’t have a single thing. And one of the things I tell folks is that maybe somebody only has a few, but that’s a start. You know, being alive is a start. Sometimes you’re starting much further behind than somebody else. That happens. That’s unfortunate, but you have those strengths and you can do it.
Whitney (45:03)
Yeah. I love it. And I just think about, you anyone who uses affirmations, that’s, you know, strengths that are identified can then become affirmations. And it just it’s feeding the person, building their self -confidence, their self -worth, their, you know, ability to believe in something better for them moving forward. And it’s amazing. Thank you for coming on and sharing this and helping people just continue to see that they have a lot already within them. So anyone who would like to connect with you, how can they do that? What’s the best way to reach
Kurt (45:49)
Email’s good. letters K and D at Arcade tools. And that’s spelled R C A D E tools .com. that’s the easiest, but, yeah, I’m out there on the internet. You LinkedIn friend or whatever.
Whitney (46:01)
All Yeah, well, we’ll make sure that we put all your details in the show notes so that people can connect with you. Peers, specialists who are out there listening, this is a way to build your skill set to serve the people that you’re working with. So keep that in mind as well. So and anyone who really is looking to build up the recovery capital of their clients, patients, maybe Arcade is the fit for you. Yeah, do a little pitch there for you.
Kurt (46:33)
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, actually add one last thing, which is, you know, I have found I can sometimes find grants to pay for the training and things like that. And so sometimes those are especially if, you know, not dealing with a lot of resources, there are resources coming online now for this kind of thing. Sometimes it takes a while to get to them, but they’re out there and I’d be happy
Whitney (46:47)
Wonderful.
Kurt (47:02)
Try to pursue that with anybody who’s looking.
Whitney (47:05)
Great, great. Wonderful. Well everyone, share this with anyone you know who may need to realize that they already have a strength within them or someone who’s working with individuals and would be interested in building up recovery capital. Really just spread the message because the more we get our stories out there, the more we’re going to beat stigma. Leave us some comments, tell us what you think. Be sure to like and share, subscribe, and just thank you for listening.
