Recovery ecosystem: More than treatment

Andre L. Johnson, Psy.D., founder and CEO of the Detroit Recovery Project, shared his vision of a “recovery ecosystem” at the annual meeting of the Association of Addiction Professionals (NAADAC) in Washington, D.C. last week. “The world has changed, it's not the world of the 80s,” he said. Johnson, after he was sober for two years, went to Morehouse for an undergraduate psychology degree and went on to work at a hospital in Detroit, where he “sat down with CEOs and CFOs and learned how money is moved around and how programs are designed based on resources,” he said. After completing a clinical internship at Tarzana Treatment Center treating 12-18-year-olds, he received a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Michigan School of Psychology. What he stressed at NAADAC was this: “we needed to develop a recovery support program.” Treatment alone wasn't working in the drug-ravaged city. The time of 120 days in treatment was over.