Substance Use: Stigma, Treatment, and Recovery

Doing Right at Birth Substance Use: Stigma, Treatment, and Recovery

Learning Objectives

Learners will explore the concept of addiction as a chronic condition, treatment, and recovery.

Understand the concept of addiction as chronic condition, and acknowledge that there is some disagreement about this
Review treatment options for substance use disorder in pregnancy
Recognize that not all drug use during pregnancy is a sign of addiction
Recognize how language can further discrimination or reflect human dignity

Community Advisor – Elizabeth

I spent several years of my life struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and heroin addiction. During this period, I worked as a journalist focused on calling out social justice issues. In 2017, my daughters were removed from my care by the state of Florida, and in 2020, my rights to them were terminated. This left me spiraling into a suicidal depression. Having lost my entire life, I decided to move to New Jersey and shift from journalism to creative writing. At the end of 2021, I drank Ayahuasca for the first time. My PTSD and addiction were gone, and in their stead, I discovered a completely shifted and magical perspective on life that has continued to show its face to me again and again in my everyday experiences as I live and work in New York City as a writer, performance artist, and tarot reader under the name Elizabeth of Lore. This story is a fantastical telling of my experience through the lens I have gained over the past three years–but the truth is, if I wrote a straightforward account of my life, you’d probably think that was fiction too.