Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Leslie Glass, Co-Founder of Reach Out Recovery:
Q: Introduction to Reach Out Recovery.
A: Reach Out Recovery Services, Inc. is a media company created to inform and support the 120 million people directly impacted by addiction and mental illness. This vast underserved population desperately needs reliable, unbiased medical and psychological information. ROR’s founders believe that the only way to slow the addiction epidemic, and save the next generation, is by creating a well-informed public. ROR’s unique Internet recovery platform and social media network engages a diverse audience not aggregated before. ROR simplifies complicated concepts, offering hope and solutions on an attractive, comprehensive platform designed to bring visitors back for more.
Recommended: Q: What is the most important thing that you’ve learned since you started Reach Out Recovery?
A: With a background in publishing and as a journalist for New York Magazine, I was a NY Times bestselling author of the April Woo mystery series in 2000 when my daughter, Lindsey, took a semester off from college to get treatment for a substance use problem. Like most parents, I didn’t have the information and tools we needed to cope with a chronic illness that brought stigma and shame along with it. For ten years we traveled a messy path to recovery, using a variety of treatment providers to help us achieve long term recovery and healthy relationships.
In 2011, Lindsey had received her Master’s degree in communications and was a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. I was a novelist with a publishing and journalist background. Since nothing had changed in the recovery world to help families in the decade since we started our journey, we made the decision to launch a website and tools that families needed more than ever. We also produced two documentaries: The Secret World Of Recovery (2012) is the 2016 American Society of Addiction Medicine Media Award winner for its contribution to the addiction field. The Secret World of Recovery is the first documentary that reveals what life on the other side of addiction is really like and is used nationwide as part of recovery orientation programs. The Silent Majority highlights five programs that empower teens to make healthy choices about drugs and alcohol and was distributed on all PBS Stations by American Public Television in 2014/15.
Reach Out Recovery offers information, tips, hope, and solutions to whatever behaviors keep people stuck. The website includes substance, alcohol, and behavior use disorders as well as family dynamics and behaviors, support and solutions all in short articles that are easy to understand invite further exploration. It is especially important now as recovery practices that are simplified and explained are particularly helpful when disasters disrupt life.
Q: What Makes Reach Out Recovery Different From other websites and information resources?
A: Reach Out Recovery stands out as a recovery reporting pioneer. Our goal was to create a website that people would visit not just once for one or two addiction questions, but rather would serve as a portal for new information, new tools, and daily support. We wanted people to feel there was a home for them, and hope. The relentless reporting of addiction ugliness and failures had contributed to a national feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. Which in turn has consistently fueled the addiction epidemic. We turned that around by focusing on the benefits of recovery. Reach Out Recovery was among the first magazine format recovery websites, and the first to consistently attract both family members and those seeking recovery. By presenting appealing content that’s easy to read and understand, we succeeded in attracting a diffuse audience that knows we’re real people with no other agenda but to help them. Today, Reach Out Recovery accepts advertising and business collaborations that fit our guidelines and goal of promoting recovery.
The Reach Out Recovery website has a contemporary theme and is updated daily with new addiction and healthy lifestyle content. A testament to our popularity is that one recent post went viral to over 1.9 million people worldwide in just one week. Even more exciting, Reach Out Recovery has evolved from an online resource to a publishing company that develops recovery books and workbooks for all ages. Now people can enhance their programs and treatment with ROR books and tools they can take with them.
Q: Why does the U.S. have an information gap about addiction and recovery?
A: Addiction and mental health treatment is not available to everyone. Only one in nine people who desperately need treatment receive it, and family members are even less likely to receive any treatment at all. The siloed nature of the mental healthcare field means that while academics and healthcare professionals create materials to train each other and to share their experience at conferences, they are not directly educating the public in a systematic and actionable way. For this reason, families need an unbiased resource like Reach Out Reach Out Recovery. We talk to the public in language they understand and give them daily support they can’t find anywhere else. As reported this week in the NY Times, 22 studies show that AA is still the most effective treatment for alcohol addiction. It is available to all, and is virtually free. ROR is free and supports the connectivity necessary for successful recovery.
Q: What accomplishments of Reach Out Recovery are you most proud of?
A: I am proud of ROR’s continuing innovation and growth. We made a little movie, started a little website, and now are creating books that are so simple and attractive anyone can profit from using them. Lindsey’s new book 100 Tips For Growing up was created for people of all ages in recovery, but has found an audience in young adults and seniors alike who are not in recovery but need a roadmap for healthy living. My Family is Hurting What Can I Do coloring book with companion workbook for adults is winning praise from social workers and agencies that serve children with adverse experiences. There isn’t another book for children with trauma like it. The same is true for Find Your True Colors in 12 Steps, a workbook that combines creativity, recovery principles, and journaling.
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Q: What has been your biggest learning since you started Reach Out Recovery?
A: The Internet of everything has been useful for consumers of almost all services and products with the exception of addiction and mental healthcare needs and services. Over 100 listing sites exist for treatment providers, but virtually none of them offer real consumer experience of care reviews or outcomes that clients can expect. Addiction and mental healthcare consumers are still in the dark about treatment options, and their families have little understanding of the scope and impact of the disease, or their part in it. That needs to change.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Reach Out Recovery has the potential to reach and educate everyone impacted by addiction. It’s a big underserved audience that hasn’t been aggregated in one place before. The mission of Reach Out Recovery is to lift the stigma and normalize addiction as part of the American experience, and to create informed citizens who know what is happening to them and solutions to help them recover.
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