Reframing Addiction: Poetic Narratives of Recovery

Twelve Step groups regularly describe alcohol and drug addiction as the “family illness,” due to the systematic way addiction takes destructive hold of nearly everyone who comes within range: not only people with SUD, themselves, but also their families and friends. Treatment programs (both inpatient and IOP) typically include components directed at families which offer guidance on how self care and behavior modification focused may offer relief from the day to day chaos of living with someone else’s addiction. In this presentation, poet, Vanderbilt professor, and former DUMC Poet in Residence, Kate Daniels, will address aspects of the current opioid epidemic, and describe how writing therapies, such as Expressive Writing developed in the 1980s as a therapeutic tool for PTSD, can be useful in addiction recovery. The presentation will include brief readings from Three Syllables Describing Addiction and In the Months of My Son’s Recovery, two collections of poetry emanating from Daniels’ family experience of addiction.

Lunch will be provided.

Time: 12-1:30pm

Location: Rubenstein Library, Room 249

Bio:

Kate Daniels is the author of six collections of poetry, including, In the Months of My Son’s Recovery  which concerns the impact of the current opioid epidemic on families.  She has served as poet in residence at DUMC, and also at Vanderbilt Medical Center.  She is affiliated with the Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Humanities at the University of Virginia.  A former Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, she is the Edwin Mims Professor of English at Vanderbilt University where she directs the creative writing program. Daniels lives in Nashville where she conducts Writing for Recovery workshops for people whose lives have been affected by addiction.