The election through a recovery capital lens
David Whitesock
Social entrepreneur turning data into intelligence for behavioral health, recovery support, and communities | Founder at Commonly Well | Architect of the Recovery Capital Index
I haven’t written in this space in a while. We’ve been working on a new software platform at Commonly Well that launched last month. Supporting our customers and getting it launched has been all consuming.
The election last week has also been very consuming.
It’s fair to say I’ve been distracted by the campaigning, the election, and now the post-election uncertainty.
Writing about the election and politics in my personal capacity is one thing — I sort of did that here — it’s entirely another in my professional capacity.
It’s complicated when the personal and professional overlap — which it does for so many in the addiction recovery world. Many of us — me included — end up in this space because of our personal experience with addiction.
Living with addiction and traversing the journey of recovery is fraught with psychological and physical barriers.
Overcoming addiction is hard.
The built environment, social systems, and almost all other aspects of life don’t make the recovery process easy.
We call these aspects or assets recovery capital.
The internal and external resources that an individual can draw upon to pursue, achieve, sustain, and enhance a life of recovery or well-being.
When individuals and communities have direct or indirect access to recovery capital, lives transform, grow, and thrive.
Elections matter because nearly everything in life can be impacted by our elected representatives.?
Looking at the election through a recovery capital lens, what might we see?
Let’s evaluate the new electoral reality and impact on individuals and communities through the three domains of recovery capital: Personal, Social, and Cultural Capital.
Note … the relative strength and capacity of building recovery capital will be dependent on what state you live in. The incoming administration made it clear during its first four years (2017-2021) that they’d rather relinquish a lot of legislating to the states (see abortion).
Personal Capital
If addiction truly takes a toll on your life and you are essentially starting over, what state you’re in will matter greatly.? Personal Capital constitutes our basic needs and overall health. Housing and employment are foundational assets and key contributors to recovery capital growth.
If you have a household income of less than $39,000 per year — which is just more half the U.S. average of $74,500 — you can afford housing in only 620 out of 2,801 counties in the U.S. Most of those counties are in rural, middle of the county states.
Although Illinois is an affordable state to live in and its minimum wage rate is above the federal rate, it has the second highest unemployment rate in the U.S., behind Nevada.
It is very unlikely that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 will be changed in the next four years. It has been this rate since 2009
Source: Minimum Wage by State
State and income strongly correlate to obesity rates in the U.S. Obesity and smoking are the two primary drivers of mortality, according to the CDC. Overall poor health plus financial stress is a deficit sustaining combo for recovery capital.
Where you live greatly matters. If you live in the Southeast or in a mostly conservative state, you are pushing a boulder up the recovery hill. You can stay sober and work very hard, but the headwinds are strong and not greatly in your favor.
Social Capital
I don’t see the underpinnings of social capital improving anytime soon. There is a ton of negative inertia within the social fabric of the United States. The election, no matter what any candidate said about unity, maintained a deep rift between us.
People will continue to separate along party lines. Those that can are looking to move to states that match their political persuasion — thus entrenching particular views.
And while there appears to be a movement amongst young millennials and Gen Z to stop using dating apps, social media will continue to be a curated echo-chamber masking as a respite from the real world.
We now have a litmus test for relationships — "do you wear a red hat?" Granted, this data is from four years ago, but nothing suggests that democrats or republicans are more likely after this election to date across party lines.
We are retreating as a society — this series of charts paint a terrible picture of isolation and frayed connection.
Cultural Capital
Cultural capital is defined as the bigger world in which we live — both individually and collectively. Communities are collections of people within a cultural framework. Our values, beliefs, sense of purpose and belonging, and spiritual understanding are core to a people’s culture and community strength.
For many, this election was about values. An oft repeated refrain this political season was: “they don’t share my values.”?
There was a considerable spike in the search term “American values” the same week Kamala Harris was nominated at the Democratic convention. Since, that search term is falling off. It seems that Americans were really confused by the stark contrast between the two nominated candidates.?
When people progress into addiction, their value system gets muddled and challenged. This is not because we become bad people, but instead we prioritize other things — i.e., what we’re addicted to — above other things and adjust our decision framework to match.
A very common experience for people new in recovery is a clash between the recovering person and their family members. The family members did not have this tectonic event around their values — it’s remains status quo for them. Their expectation is that the recovering person will return to their familiar familial value structure.
But the recovering person is reevaluating nearly everything about their lives. They investigate who they were before the addiction, what the addiction made them become, and who they want to be post addiction. This level of introspection almost always leads to a reordering of the recovering person’s values.
Tension in recovery comes from a lot of places — usually from the personal and social capital domains. But lying under the surface, nagging and creating dissonance are the cultural changes — values, beliefs, purpose, spirituality. The recovering person is finding out that their new-found self is incongruent with the norms and mores of their familial and social circle or the community where they live.
And if staying sober at all costs is more than a mantra, then people create significant boundaries with family and friends and oftentimes move to someplace more psychologically protecting.
This election — and maybe the last three elections — is shining a spotlight on all the harsh inconsistencies — mostly perceived and not real — in our collective value set.?
Recovery capital has nothing — not much anyway — to do with available AA meetings or recovery supports or treatment services in a community. These are important and necessary, but in the long arc of life for most people, these aspects rank relatively low when assessing the key elements of success in recovery.
What truly matters is the strength and resilience of the social, environmental, and cultural assets in a community.
In economics and financial terms, these are the fundamentals of life’s bottom line.
Or as Gallup views it: when we evaluate our lives, are we currently satisfied and do we see a positive future. 52% of Americans evaluate their lives as thriving — this means that 48% of us are suffering and struggling.
Addiction is a symptom of a larger malaise in the United States.
If our political strife is creating fragmented realities of these fundamentals, achieving a state of thriving will be difficult for anyone, let alone a person trying to untether from the bonds of addiction.?