Reframing Recovery

Dec 19

Episode Guests:

Susan Stellin
& Graham MacIndoe

In a bonus episode, The Mayo Lab Podcast invited public health advocate and former New York Times journalist Susan Stellin and visual artist Graham MacIndoe to speak about their exhibition “Beyond Addiction, Reframing Recovery.”

MacIndoe and Stellin’s exhibition aimed to redefine the narrative surrounding addiction and recovery, moving beyond the stereotypical images often portrayed in media and highlighting the different paths people take in recovery.

Their exhibition shows a range of perspectives, spanning harm reduction efforts, portraits depicting things that are meaningful to people in recovery, and a visual narrative that shows the journey of a woman getting treatment for substance use disorder.

“There’s a whole big, gray area in there of people trying,” said MacIndoe, “people using different ways, setbacks, struggles. For some, it’s easy, and for some, it’s hard…[We tried] to cover all those little things to make people understand that there’s no magic bullet, there’s not a quick click, and that’s it.”

“My life became this tiny little thing, and that’s totally boring. It was drugs. And then as I got better, all those things came back to me. My life is so full right now. I’ve stuff to do and people to meet, and engaging opportunities that I wouldn't have had if I was an active addict. It just wouldn’t have happened for me.”

— Graham MacIndoe

In a conversation about the politicization of harm reduction, Stellin and MacIndoe spoke about the importance of keeping people safe while also emphasizing the need for subsequent steps towards treatment. MacIndoe said, “The line that always resonates with me for harm reduction is to meet people where they're at, but don't leave them where they're at. So it is meeting people where they're at, giving them the things to keep them safe, and hopefully they'll make that decision and move along.”

Stellin underscored the importance of sharing true stories and messages to challenge stereotypes. “[There’s an] idea that recovery is rare,” she said. “That's not true. Most people do recover, as fuzzy as the statistics are. So finding opportunities to take those messages out, whether it's through public art, whether it's through workshops, the art and storytelling group, or interviews in the media, just where are the creative places you can take that and start having those conversations.”

MacIndoe and Stellin highlighted the need for open conversations about different methods for recovery and the importance of mental health approaches in substance use disorder treatment.

“I just think that we shouldn't silo ourselves,” said MacIndoe. “We should have everything on the table…It is just about having empathy and understanding that this is a complex thing, this addiction. And recovery is complex as well. And there's no quick fix for it. We should be willing to engage and operate in all the little nooks and crannies of everyone from deep addiction to recovery and abstinence if that's what people want. But there are different pathways.”

To hear more from the bonus episode, scroll down to listen to the episode or read the transcript.

Watch the podcast on YouTube:

Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
I am Meagan Rosenthal.
Alexis Lee:
And I'm Alexis Lee. And this is the Mayo Lab Podcast.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Mayo Lab podcast, and we're so excited today to have two very special guests with us in the studio, Susan Stellin and Graham MacIndoe. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for coming.
Graham MacIndoe:
Thank you.
Susan Stellin:
Thanks for having us. Great to be here.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
You guys have been in Oxford for a couple days now, but originally are from New York right now. So why don't you both, whoever wants to go first, just give a little bit of your professional background and how you got to Oxford right now.
Susan Stellin:
Do you want to start Graham?
Graham MacIndoe:
I'll start. Yeah. My professional background is I'm a photographer, a documentary and portrait photographer. And I'm also a professor of photography at Parsons, the New School in New York City. Susan, I curated an exhibition there in 2019 called Beyond Addiction, Reframing Recovery, which subsequently went to RIT, which was organized by Josh Meltzer and is now here. And part of the reason that we are now here in Oxford.
Susan Stellin:
Yeah. And I started my career working in journalism mostly for the New York Times and helped the New York Times set up their website at the time, and worked as a journalist covering different topics for many years. And then just before the pandemic, went back to school for a public health degree, and was interested in the topic of substance use and addiction, so migrated. I had also been teaching ethics and the history of journalism, but started focusing on substance use as a topic and how we can shift more toward health centered responses to substance use and the crossover with mental health as well.
And then worked with Graham, we're married and collaborate on projects together. So I've come out of the words background. He comes out of photography and images. So a lot of our collaborations including this exhibition are how can we use both images and texts to tell stories about the topic that many people just out in the world and media coverage entertainment see addiction represented, but not so much the pathways to recovery and the many different pathways. So we curated this exhibition reaching out to other photographers, and artists, and writers looking for work that explored that topic.
Alexis Lee:
And I know there's a little bit deeper reasons of why this is such an important exhibition for you both. And the photos are just outstanding. The website you guys have doesn't even do them justice, and Megan and I both have gotten to see them in person. It gives me chills when I think about it. But how did you land on this exhibit, curating it, and then also the title? I'm fascinated to know how you guys landed on the title.
Susan Stellin:
Well, just to start backwards, I think sometimes we shorten it to Reframing Recovery, but I think having that Beyond Addiction, Reframing Recovery really captures what we were thinking about in terms of let's move the conversation and people's thinking beyond addiction and think about how we can expand people's thoughts about recovery. Sometimes like to say we've all recovered from something, especially now coming out of the pandemic, and whether it's an illness, an injury, a natural disaster, anyone can relate to recovery. And some of the common themes are it always takes longer than you think it will, there are setbacks along the way.
So really that title, and we were very fortunate to have a friend at Pentagram Design help us with a logo. It captures that idea of shifting to looking at the process of what helps people and what helps different people.
And then Graham can talk about how naive we were when we thought about, "Oh, let's curate an exhibition. How hard can that be?"
Graham MacIndoe:
Yeah, I as part of my being a professor at Parsons, these opportunities pop up every so often for faculty resource grants or exhibition curations. And I knew there was one in the main galleries. We have two beautiful big galleries on Fifth Avenue in New York, which are amazing to have. And so the one that's right on Fifth Avenue, they have an open call for faculty and students actually to propose an exhibition to be curated by you. And they throw a little bit of money at you. And I said, "Oh, that can't be that hard. Let's do some about addiction and recovery or harm reduction."
So I wrote this proposal and Susan helped me with that. And I submitted it and I got through to the second round. And I said, "Oh yeah." I went the second round and I went and met with them. And I eventually got it and I said, "Yeah, we can just do an open call, get a bunch of pictures, stick them on the wall." I take my hat off to curators.
It is nowhere near as easy as you would think. Just finding the variety of people, variety of subject matters, variety of approaches. And then with the open call, we just got so many people just sending us pictures of addicts and active addiction. And I very clearly said, "We want right across the gamut, but we're looking at solutions, not the problem. We know the problem exists. We're looking at what are the solutions. How do we go beyond addiction and look at different pathways, whether it's medically assisted treatment, whether it's harm reduction, whether it's full on 12 Step, is it art therapy? What was the thing?".
And so it did take a lot of outreach to really pull in a really diverse crowd. And I taught a class as well to get students involved in it and collaborated with a woman called Julia Gorton who had a design class. So we worked with some designers as well. And so we ended up with multimedia. And then we ended up in an open call on Facebook. And that's how we met Josh, who's been very involved with it since. Friends on Facebook was a co-faculty of his. And I didn't really know his work. I knew his name a little bit. And she said, "You need to talk to Josh. And he'd worked with Bes Macy's. So it rolled on from there. That's been building on that. Every time we have a different iteration of it, we build on who's in it, and try to get student participation and also community participation as well. So it's relevant to the place you're bringing it.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
I'd love for you to dive in a little bit more on what distinguishes the imagery for folks who are inactive addiction. And you alluded to this Susan too about what we see in the media, versus some of the imagery that you have presented as part of this exhibit. Because they are, I would say in my observation diametrically opposed from each other. They might be the same people, but they're not the same images. And there's a sense of hopefulness and really forward lookingness in the imagery that you've put together in your exhibition in comparison to some of those other images that you see of folks who are in active addiction. As you said, it's real. But for you all, as you were putting that original exhibition together, what distinguish those two buckets of images from each other?
Susan Stellin:
Well, we are trying to think of it a bit more as a continuum. And so sometimes things get put in the binary and trying not to represent the pathways that people take. So there are, it's not here, but one of the projects we showed was someone who'd worked in harm reduction, so distributing clean syringes in New York City decades ago and still had all these snapshots from that time. So we put those under a glass covered table. So that represented also people who are trying to help. And Josh Meltzer's photography focuses a lot on some people, whether they're in treatment, or medical providers, or nurses, or recovery support people. So it's not that there isn't active addiction represented, but it's reframing what imagery can we show about that.
And then also another project where part of our goal was to prioritize people who have either personal experience with this topic as artists or people who had deeper engagement with the participants that they were photographing or working with. So there's a photography project that documents the journey of a young woman. And you see the difference in the photographs, the photographer's Tony Foose, as her evolution as she seeks help and gets treatment. So really trying to show that as a continuum, but not the same images that you see, particularly in news media that just mostly illustrate the mayhem, and really the public side of addiction where it's people outdoors in parks or on the street.
Graham MacIndoe:
Yeah. And if I could just add to that, it's there's a big gray area that gets overlooked between active addiction and what you see in the press, or what's often seen as people who have an opioid use disorder. As Susan said, they're in the street, they're in the open or using needles, it's dirty, it's grimy. And then you've got that media representation. They say, "oh, I went to this 12 Step meeting and I'm fine."
And there's a whole big gray area in there of people trying, people using different ways, setbacks, struggles. For some it's easy for some, it's hard. For some it takes a few attempts. So it's just trying to cover all those little things to make people understand that there's no magic bullet, there's no a quick click, and that's it. For a lot of people it takes a lot of attempts. And for some people it means using medically assisted treatments for many, many years to get themselves stabilized, which is great. For some it's a harm reduction approach. It is just trying to cover all those little things to show that it's a bigger topic than people think. And there's not just these two points of entry and departure.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
And I would like to pick up, because at the talk that you all gave earlier this week, Graham, you talked about the gray area around harm reduction, this idea that clean needle exchanges and those kinds of things are really great for making sure folks are safe in the midst of it. But you made a comment about that not being in and of itself sufficient, that there needs to be a step after that, that we are getting folks into treatment. So I'd like for you all to continue to be in that gray zone for a second and talk us through, talk our audience through what does that mean from your experience, and your observation and work in this space?
Susan Stellin:
I think I'll start just because in the work I do, I also do a lot of training workshops working with providers. And one of the workshops I teach is called Building Bridges Between Harm reduction and treatment. And treatment is, I view it broadly, it's care for people who not only often have substance use problems, but also mental health, housing challenges, criminal legal system involvement.
And I think it's shifting harm reduction as an approach that is a process of engaging with people, but then also how can we incentivize, and nudge, and make it easier for people to access whatever treatment they're interested in that might be helpful to them that's available. Sometimes it's helping people get the IDs that they need to get them signed up for Medicaid or benefits that would cover these services. So it's really, sometimes I think Graham mentioned, meet people where they're at, but don't leave them there. And I phrase it as meet people where they're at and then help them get to where they want to be.
And the work that we do, which maybe Graham can talk about with a community-based organization called Vocal, which is in New York, but also has chapters in Texas and Kentucky. We do an art and storytelling group there that we've just restarted where you really get to hear from people, like they're writing, they're making art about their lives and what they feel would help them.
Graham MacIndoe:
Yeah, just as Susan said, the line that always resonates with me for harm reduction is meet people where they're at, but don't leave them where they're at. So it is meeting people where they're at, giving them the things to keep them safe, and hopefully they'll make that decision and move along. And it's really just about funding and help that people need. They need the wraparound services, they need the housing. People can't pull their shell up by the bootstraps when they're that low down. And there's always this thing, "Well just pick yourself up." And it is difficult for somebody who's been traumatized by addiction, or incarceration, or being houseless, or any of these things.
So the workshop that Susan and I do and I had previously done before the pandemic was... And I've been through addiction and recovery and been around that a lot, but it was very humbling to me. Those things that people share, they open up very, very much about their personal experiences, what they've been through, what they would change in their life at this stage if they could, and what they would hope to change to bring, to be the thing that Susan says, "What could bring you to be the person you want to be?"
So those things are all important. Again, gray areas, but when you're dealing with real people in real situations and you hear their stories, there was a woman last week who shared with us about she was coming off an opioid addiction. And she was four or five days in, and she wrote a little piece about it and read it to us in the class. And she cried the whole way through it. And is very humbling. It's very emotional, but it's also very cathartic for people to be able to be in that environment, and share, and talk about their hopes and what they really want moving ahead.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
And I think one of the things that struck me again from this discussion that we're having here and the talk that we gave earlier this week is, and I'd like to hear from you Susan on your thought on this as an MPH, a person with a master's in public health, is the politicization of the term harm reduction. And where we are in Mississippi, that's a complicated term. If you're talking to folks, and we've done this in our work around the state, nobody's averse to getting people help who need help. But you suddenly wrap that in or to talk about the idea of harm reduction, that becomes a different conversation. And so I'd be curious to know, because there's still a lot of stigma attached to addiction and all of these different things. How do you all approach that in your work in advocating for folks who might not have an opportunity or the capacity at any given moment in time to be advocates for themselves?
Susan Stellin:
We like to say it is a field that can have a lot of divisions in it. And then when you add in public opinion or public policy, those are exacerbated, whether it's about harm reduction or decriminalization topics. So we just say we support it all. We're not necessarily on one team. We can go into venues where we're talking about recovery support, or treatment with medications, or other behavioral health approaches. We can talk about harm reduction. So for me, it's how can we foster more opportunities for people to learn about things that they might think they know but don't really know? How has harm reduction evolved or how do people understand it? And the definitions, some of the work I do, I show different definitions of harm reduction.
And there was one from a young woman that we'd interviewed and she had experience of addiction in her family and talked about to her harm reduction means that there's services and support out there for the parent so it doesn't fall on the child because when you stigmatize the parent and don't offer them help, that's where it ends up. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but it blew me away to think about it that way. And I thought, I've never heard anybody with a PhD or executive director of an organization frame it the way she did. But that was just really powerful to think about harm reduction from the perspective of a child or a young adult, dealing with a family member that they care about that they want to help, and if there aren't these other resources engaging that person. And she talked about her mom being in recovery now, but her mom's partner not having found that path and dying. So she really had seen different sides of it.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
Wow. No, I like that a lot. And this is part of the power of that storytelling component and engaging with the folks like you all have and will continue to do with folks who are in that space, living that life. Because you're right, a person with a PhD that we don't often get the opportunity to be on the ground, so to speak with those people because that's just not how our lives are often designed.
Susan Stellin:
And if I can just add too, we were able to include that with her permission along with the other people we featured on a banner that was part of a photography public art show in New York City in Brooklyn Bridge Park. So to watch people walk around their different peers here and see the words and the photographs to take that into places that might be unexpected, but someone might be walking by with their kids to a soccer game or someone might be jogging or walking their dog. So it was really great to go back to her and say, "Hey, this is where we'd like to put this," and the feeling that that gave her.
Alexis Lee:
And what's that been like? Because you guys have had this in a few places and spaces, to see people maybe walk by, take a second lap, and just watch them interact or see how they respond to the art and the words. What's that been like for both of you?
Graham MacIndoe:
For me, it's rewarding because you get people that might not have thought about it twice, coming in and engaging with it and it resonates with them. And they say, "Oh, I never thought about this aspect. I never thought about that." And the other thing is you get people who come in and they look around and they read the stories, read the text, look at the pictures, and then it gives them the strength and power to talk about a family member that they might... We've had so many people come up to us and say, "I've never told anyone this before," or, "I've never really shared this, but my sister, brother, aunt, daughter..." And I had a number of people reach out to me, especially after the New York one, parents of younger kids in their teens or early twenties saying to me, "Listen, my son has really, he's got a problem. It's not extreme yet, but I would really appreciate it if you could talk to them and just sit down with them."
Because I think for someone like me who's lived through that, and that lived experience thing resonates with people who are still in active addiction or are still struggling, they want to hear from someone. They don't want to hear from a doctor or an academic because they don't think they really know or understand. They do in some aspects. But when it comes down to someone who's lived through it, and I have a pretty gritty story. And when I sit down and talk to them and tell them, listen to them and what they've got to say. And it doesn't work all the time. There's been people who've been introduced to who've relapsed. There's been people who've died, but there've be many who've really taken it on, and recovered, and moved on their lives. Their parents are grateful, they're grateful. I keep in touch with them.
And that for me is fulfilling. When I see somebody having the potential, when I see that parent having the kid back in their lives that they're just like, "Now, he's a..." This is really rewarding for me. And it's tough, and it's hard, and it takes time. And as Susan said, there's setbacks, and relapses, and things on the way. Nothing's really smooth, just like life itself, but it does happen. So that's the most important thing for me, is that engagement from people that might not necessarily come to that stuff or might not necessarily open up to someone about that same issue.
Susan Stellin:
And even here, just that fulfillment you get, someone was walking by as we were installing it, who worked on campus? And I thought pausing and really taking it in, and then just disclosed that they were in recovery, and thanking us and just-
Graham MacIndoe:
And came back three times.
Susan Stellin:
And even the students, the classes that we visited, I think really noticing that as the years go by, there's more openness if you give people an opportunity to talk about it, whether it's a family member, a friend, their own experience. And I think art and something like an exhibition or an event can be such a great way to bring this topic in. And the first exhibit we did in New York City, some of the people featured in our project and other projects were able to come see it. And one woman just was standing there. And she just was looking at the wall and she goes, "Those are my words." And what a great feeling to be able to let someone feel how they were describing their experience was on a wall in a gallery in New York City. And someone who grew up in public housing and would not necessarily have had that opportunity to be on the wall at a major museum, but still really appreciated that.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
That's very cool. That is very cool.
Voiceover:
You are listening to the Mayo Lab Podcast. For more information and resources, visit themayolab.com. Now back to the episode.
Alexis Lee:
And one thing you said Graham, at the event that I just love, is so many people think recovery is boring, but you're like, "I think addiction's more boring." Can you speak to that a little bit? And I am paraphrasing, I think too also, but.
Graham MacIndoe:
Yeah. I've said that a few times. People do say that because there's the way that addiction's depicted in the media, and in music, and in songs and stuff like that, it's got certain swagger. You watch Euphoria, or you listen to certain songs, or even Breaking Bad as grim as it is at the end, there's a certain romanticism and coolness with the drugs thing. "Yeah, we got this." And that's just a tiny wee bit. The rest of it's pretty mundane because once it becomes an addiction or a dependency, your life's dictated by finding that drug. Mine was for many years., it was the first thing on my mind when I woke up in the morning, it was the last thing on my mind when I went to bed, and it dictated most of my waking hours. Or I was just coming down from it or lazing around in it.
Because you give up all the... I gave up all the things that I cared about and loved. I was a track and cross country runner for years. I gave up that. I gave up relationships and friendships. I gave up really taking photographs. I gave up going to galleries, going to movies, engaging with friends. My life became this tiny little thing, and that's totally boring. It was drugs. And then as I got better, all those things came back to me. My life is so full right now. I've stuffed it to do, and people to meet, and engaging opportunities that I wouldn't have had if I was an active addict. It just wouldn't have happened for me.
And I think it's because it's a gradual slide into that for a lot of people. In the beginning it was great. I won't lie it. There was a certain euphoria, there was a certain feeling, it's cool. I was in a business where a lot of people were using. And there was that like, "Yeah, this is all good." And it is all good for a little bit until it's not. And if you can't pull yourself off of that precipice and you start going down like I did. I used with people who pulled their self back. I didn't. I just kept going. And then it's really hard because you're in denial for so long. And then once you're out of the denial, you're in shame. And once you're in shame, you're isolated. And once you're isolated, it's just snowballs. And you end up in that position where it's all consuming. And that to me was boring and traumatic way of living because it is repeated every single day. It is just the same day every day.
Alexis Lee:
And as you said, there's so much depicted in society and culture. And so how do you guys, other than this exhibit, want to combat that, or hope that this exhibit does help combat that, or working with others does help combat that?
Susan Stellin:
Yeah, I think it's finding what are those venues that you can... Everybody's talking in public health circles about stigma and how do you attack stigma? And I sometimes say, "Well, that's a very broad vague term." How do you break that down? Is it more about misperceptions? And I've landed on work I'm doing with Graham, and Josh, and some of the training elsewhere that asking people, "How did you learn about drug use, addiction, treatment, and recovery? Think about all the sources that shaped your views." And it's a really great question to lead into some of this because if you prompt in thinking about popular culture, and movies, and film, and books, and social media, and personal experience, and you can draw out all these different things. So then to think about, okay, what are the messages that people absorb from that? And are they true?
And maybe they were things that people really felt at the time that we were growing up, but now looking back thinking that helping someone is just enabling them is not something that's really done in the treatment industry or there's much more effort to support families. And family's broadly defined. It might be a friend, it might be an ex like me in terms of my relationship with Graham at the time when I was helping him. And the idea that recovery is rare. That's not true. Most people do recover as fuzzy as the statistics are. So finding opportunities to take those messages out, whether it's through public art, whether it's through workshops, the art and storytelling group, or interviews in the media, just where are the creative places you can take that and start having those conversations.
Alexis Lee:
It's like meeting people where they are, where they're consuming that. And I just think that's fascinating because where it's at on campus is a place that is so well patterned and trafficked. So many people walk through there and walk around there. And I think everyone that would've saw it this week wouldn't have gone somewhere to see it maybe. They just happened to be having their normal pattern to class. And I know I shared with them, I used to sit in that lounge weekly, daily sometimes when I was an undergrad. And so I would've ended up looking at whatever was on the wall around there. And so just meeting people where they are, it's less invasive in a way. It's more welcoming to them, which I love to see and I love to hear. And I love that you guys are talking with other students and the rising journalists and the rising photographers coming up and teaching them.
And one thing, I know Josh isn't here, but he said that people thought it had to be this big grand thing, recovery did, like this big hill you climb, this big peak. But he was like something as mundane as keys. And that was so important to someone because those keys represented a house, AA meetings they were unlocking, trust that people had rebuilt with them. And anyone would look at a key and just say, "Oh, we all have keys." Well, and we don't all have keys. And that to someone was so important. And that just hit me so hard of, we all have a story, and it doesn't have to be this big grand thing, but we all have words to share. We all can meet people and share with other people. And so thank you for doing that here also.
Graham MacIndoe:
Thank you.
Susan Stellin:
Yeah, that project is actually by a Scottish social worker, Neil Sneddon. So just to expand on what Alexis is saying, that he gave disposable cameras to some of the people he was working with and asked them to photograph something that was meaningful in their recovery and then wrote something about it. So that person wrote about having a set of keys. Someone else wrote about their dog and had a photo of a dog, someone else, and a bag of groceries. So that project is here and is one that really resonates with people. So when we think about, gosh, how do you show recovery in a different way visually and through text, that's been a really creative approach that I think has connected with a lot of people.
Alexis Lee:
You guys wrote a book. Can you talk a little bit about that, how that came to be, that process? And we'll have it linked for everyone. We have it on our list to order right now, so we're excited. But will you speak a little bit about that?
Susan Stellin:
Yeah, so originally I'd come out of long career writing, and had felt like one of the things we haven't talked about is Graham's pathway through incarceration and also immigration detention, because he had a green card and was a legal permanent resident, but because of his misdemeanor drug possession convictions ended up in first Rikers Island and then in deportation proceedings. So for us after he got out, and he did win his case, and eventually now has dual citizenship, that pathway through the criminal legal system and then immigration detention was really important for us to write about.
So originally I was going to try to write a book, and then as we got into it felt like, well, maybe this should be a dual memoir because it's so important to see it from the two perspectives. So that's what we ended up shaping our proposal around, and some sample chapters, and probably was, I'd say, the hardest thing we've done together. I wouldn't recommend writing a book with your partner, a memoir about some of the most traumatic experiences you've been through.
Alexis Lee:
That's fair.
Graham MacIndoe:
We're butted heads a few times.
Alexis Lee:
That's okay.
Susan Stellin:
Well, just the places that I had to nudge Graham to go to access that.
Graham MacIndoe:
Yeah. I had to go deep into things that had blocked off, like past drug use, incarceration, stuff like that, that I'm, obviously I'd lived through it and been through it, but this was quite early in my recovery as well. So it wasn't a place I was too comfortable going back to that quickly. But I didn't have a choice because we had a deadline and Random House to keep the deadlines. There was a few moments that were really tough for me where I had to... We had an editor who kept telling me, "Tell me what that really felt like." And I'm like, "I just did." And he goes, "No, go deeper." And I'm like, "Oh God."
The weird thing about it was at that time, and it does happen occasionally, I started getting these drug dream flashbacks. I'd wake up, I'd have these drug dreams. I'd been thinking so much about it and writing so much about it that I'd be in my sleep, I'd wake up in a panic thinking that I'd relapsed. And it would take me five minutes to realize that, oh, it was just a dream. But I'd be shaking and sweating occasionally because they were so visceral for me because I was going so deep with some of those things.
So yeah, I'm glad we did it. And so many people reached out, and read it, and have written us about what it meant to them. So with all these things at the end of the day, if you get a handful, a dozen, two dozen people, that it changes their perception, it changes their lives, they think differently about a group of people that wouldn't have thought about, it nudges them, trying to address an issue with a family member or something like that, it's worth it. It's absolutely worth it. We're not trying to reshape the wheel or anything like that. We're just trying to make some people find something in life that might not be there before they read the book or saw the exhibition.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
That's amazing. And I love the idea of this one person to one person, or a small group of people, because really, you've talked about this is not... Were it an easy problem to solve, somebody else would've solved it already. And so making those tiny little steps forward and having that ripple effect of getting out and getting out further is such a powerful message for us to be thinking about in this space because it is a big problem. And it has grown unfortunately in the last few years, again, in a way that we couldn't have anticipated before. And so I like that that brings it down to me. It brings it down to something that's manageable. I can help influence the people around me, and hopefully they can be empowered to influence the people around them. And if we get enough of that going on, we'll make a bigger dent in this than we would if we're just like, throw up our hands and be like, "Oh, there's nothing we can do," or relying on solutions that may or may not be practical or feasible for everyone to be rallied around.
Alexis Lee:
I know you both have a lot of personal experience and connection to this, what you do every day. Is there challenges still day to day that came up for you guys having lived through some of these things and still working with this community? Is there struggles at all that come up? And if there are, how do you guys move and work through them?
Susan Stellin:
I'm going to connect that question to a little bit of follow up on the previous topic, which is I think that my perspective was interesting to see how it resonated with people. Because within this realm, I sometimes call our relationship, it was a relationship of choice, right? Graham was my ex. I was still involved in his life, but even when we were together and not together, we don't hear as much about that as we do about dealing with someone who's a child, or a parent, or a sibling, a family member that you're tied to in some sense.
And there'd been so much messaging about tough love that people had absorbed, and they felt like, well, this is what everybody's telling us. And that I think continues to be interesting to hear from people, because for me, one of the challenges was that people would write in comments or reviews of the book, or other settings that we've talked in, "Well, the message is stand by your man." And I was like, "whoa". First of all, we weren't together. And if you've never been touched by the criminal legal system, it's really hard to understand just that your instinct is like, "Don't let this person languish," whether it's at Rikers Island or immigration detention, that adds a different layer to just, "This is someone in active addiction."
So I think recognizing that within the realm of families, broadly defined in personal relationships, often maybe it's a grandparent, maybe it's a partner, maybe it's an ex, but helping people navigate that, should I stay or should I go? Or how much should I give? And I think that's something that still comes up that I was surprised by how much people judged me either as not feminist enough, or just not understanding as Graham said, "Why did you do this? And how did that make you feel?"
And to this day, people sometimes still ask, "Why did you help him?" And often I think it says more about the person who's asking me that question or making that comment. And I've really had to come to accept that people are bringing their own background and maybe they have to justify, which is completely understandable, why they cut off a relationship with a sibling or a parent, and they're seeing me through that lens, or they did break up with someone. So I think that's one of the things that still comes up, that people really navigate boundaries, which are important, and taking care of yourself with how do you help this person?
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
That's good.
Graham MacIndoe:
Do you want me to add to that?
Susan Stellin:
Well I don't know, do you have anything to add? Just on the question of what still comes up today, maybe just the divisions within the field too, and can't we all just get along. We all want the best.
Graham MacIndoe:
There's a lot of division. Harm reduction will take one view, Twelve Steppers take one view, and it's again, there's that big gray area. And I think for me, it's like, for someone who's... I relapsed a lot before I actually got... I tried so many times. I cold turkey'd, I went to detoxes, I went to rehab. None of it really worked for me. And until... People say, "when you're ready". I don't know if I'd ever really been ready, but I was forced into it by the criminal justice system. I was on a treatment program in a prison, which really worked for me. I really embraced it and it really worked for me. It was life-changing for me. It just made me... I had great counselors there, and they were really down to earth and open. It was not pampering in any way, shape, or form. And so that really, really helped me.
But I just think that we shouldn't silo ourselves. We should have everything on the table. We should help people get clean needles, and we should help people with any of that stuff to keep them alive, or to make them feel better about the selves, or reduce the spread of infectious diseases and stuff like that with the hope that, not with the expectation, but with the hope that they'll make the next step and the next step. Because when you hit someone with something so drastic as, "Well, if we're going to give you this, you have to be there in six weeks or twenty-eight days or something like that." That's mind-boggling to some people. If you've had years and years and years of active addiction and relapsed a bunch of times, and seen people die, that's a big, big jump. That's like asking me to break an Olympic record or something. It is a huge leap.
So everything should be on the table to help people along the way, and hopefully they'll get there, but if they don't get there, it's all right if they just get to here, or here, or here, or here in the meantime. It is just about having empathy and understanding that this is a complex thing, this addiction. And recovery is complex as well. And there's no quick fix for it. We should be willing to engage and operate in all the little nooks and crannies of everyone from deep addiction to recovery and abstinence if that's what people want. But there are different pathways.
I know people who've been extreme heroin addicts, they've kicked heroin. They still drink or smoke weed, but they don't have a problem with it, and they're fine, and that's good enough for them. That's fine. They're not out in the street anymore. They've got a job. So it is different things for different people. And there are obviously people who need to be totally absent because otherwise, and I've got very close friends who that is the thing for them, and that's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. Just whatever little step it is that helps you and gets you further down that path of getting better is the thing that I believe in.
Susan Stellin:
And I think Graham bringing up, to address that too, just the things that are still difficult, or I don't think we've had really deep complex discussions about what abstinence is and what it means, and does it mean abstinence from everything forever? And again, moving away from these binaries where maybe that needs to be more talked about. People will tell us privately about certain things that they would never say publicly because they work in the field. And this abstinence in some respects can be seen as almost stigmatized now, that because some people don't have a great experience with it, or just feel that that's too punitive because it's a requirement of maybe a drug court proceeding. So that's a conversation I think that could be embraced more openly, and really figure out what does that mean, especially for young people who often do just age out of substance use and binge drinking that might happen in their early twenties or adolescence.
And then also Graham didn't mention that the program he was in was a cognitive behavioral based therapy. And the mental health approaches that are part of addiction treatment for many people, they're harder to test than medications are, and surgeries for people. So it's a little bit understudied, I'd say, to understand what helps people, and so hard to access. How do you find a therapist? Is it covered by insurance? Does that person have training in addiction? But I think there's much more that could be done to make those approaches, behavioral health, mental health services more available, affordable, and acceptable to people.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
This has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for making the time to come and chat with us here today. And of course for making the trek down here to Oxford in Mississippi. We know we're not super easy to get to, so we appreciate you all being here with us. And if you all, when this airs, folks are listening, hopefully we'll have had the chance to see the exhibition, but the exhibition won't be up anymore. And so please, we'll link to your all's website, and get those resources so folks can take a look at those, and witness through the screen the power of the imagery that you all have created.
And I am hopeful that we can continue this conversation and that we might have you all back down here to do a class at some point in the future. I'm speaking that into, I know we've been talking about that for what feels like forever, but I'm speaking it into reality, right? We're going to have that happen. And we'll have you all back down and here again and open it up to the community because I think it would be really amazing for our larger community to get to witness and feel what you all do firsthand. So thank you so much for making the time. We appreciate it.
Graham MacIndoe:
Thank you for having us.
Susan Stellin:
Great. Thank you. And that website is feframingrecovery.org. And yes, we do need to update the photos. So it's like one of those things that you put together a website and then think, oh, we have such great photos because we have two brilliant photographers, well, and many more who are involved with this project. So hope to be able to show off the work there.
Dr. Meagan Rosenthal:
Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you all.
Voiceover:
Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Mayo Lab Podcast. The Mayo Lab Podcast is produced by Dr. Natasha Jeter, Dr. Meagen Rosenthal, Alexis Lee, Slade Lewis, and Hannah Finch. This podcast was recorded at Broadcast Studio in Oxford Mississippi. The show was mixed and mastered by Clay Jones, and our original music was composed by Slade Lewis. The Mayo Lab podcast is brought to you by the William McGee Institute for Student Wellbeing.
For more information on the Mayo Lab podcast, head over to themayolab.com, and follow us on social media @themayolab. If you enjoyed listening to the Mayo Lab Podcast, we'd love for you to subscribe, rate, and give a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to this podcast.
This podcast represents the opinions of Dr. Meagen Rosenthal, Alexis Lee, and their guests on the show. This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for the medical advice of a licensed counselor or a physician. The listener should consult with their mental health professional and any matters relating to his or her health, or the health of a child.