Recovery Is About Connection
This year, I am struck by the willingness of people to step forward and shed their anonymity to help de-stigmatize recovery and addiction.
Recovery is not about abstinence. Recovery is about connection.
Strengthening connections creates resilience — not just for those in the early stages of recovery, but for everyone. That is why extending a recovery focus into families, communities and workplaces is so important.
It puts a frame around what is truly important: our relationships, our health, our sense of purpose and our joy. By focusing on the connections that support recovery, daily encounters have a preventive impact for some and a healing effect for others. Everyone benefits.
We saw that connection in a very public way during Recovery Night with the Tampa Bay Rays.
Putting recovery center field at the Rays game was about reconnecting people in recovery to their sense of joy and to the broader community of fans. It was also about showing people who are not in recovery that people just like them enter recovery each and every day.
In short, recovery is possible.
That message remains urgent as we look at the progress our region has made.
Our overdose numbers can decline because people are connecting to recovery, or they can decline because people with substance use disorder are dying. It is imperative that we redouble our efforts to make sure deaths are declining because more people are connecting to recovery and reconnecting with their sense of purpose, joy, health and community.
Live Tampa Bay is also at an important point in considering what comes next for our collaborative.
We reduced the number of overdose deaths by 50% in four years. To many people in our coalition, that feels like just the beginning.
As we cast our vision toward 2027, we now have an opportunity to consider the next goal for Live Tampa Bay.
Where should we go from here?
And what role should recovery and recovery services play in helping us achieve that goal?
Those are the questions I hope we continue asking together as we build on the progress already made.
Jennifer Webb
President & CEO
Live Tampa Bay
