Pillar #3: Community - Who is Your Lifeline?

Who would you call in a crisis moment? I want you to think about that, and hopefully you have a quick answer. I know I do. I have a wonderful network of people I know that I can rely on when things are challenging, and hopefully you do as well. But I want to talk a little bit about community. My name is Jason Lennox, and I am your resident recovery champion, here to talk about everything. Recovery and wellness. I believe we're all in some version of recovery. And right now I'm in the middle of a four part series, the four pillars of recovery.

And that really comes from SAMHSA, a national body, federal entity that provides funding, resources, education. And the third pillar is community. And as in my previous videos in this series and all of them, I'm tying them to one of the levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And this one ties to the love and belonging. That middle of five levels, love and belonging and community. Who are my family, who are my friends and my relationships. And so I want to break it down into two circles. There's an inner circle that we all have, and then there's an outer circle.

And that inner circle I'm going to call family. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's a biological family. We have made and chosen families. I know I do. And that's a very important part. That's my inner circle. And then kind of the next level out, who is my network? Who are the people in my network that I know I can rely on for wellness to keep me in check, recovery, all those things. So, thinking about family, there was a study done several years ago that observed the impact of family in substance use treatment.

And four key takeaways from that study was people were less likely to be hospitalized or have a relapse. If family was involved, they were more likely to continue treatment and adhere to treatment. They were more likely to recover, and they were less likely to be involved in the justice system. So it's very clear that family involvement makes a huge difference. And I can tell you from my own experience that my. My own family and creating the relationships I have is something that allows me to wake up, gives me something to look forward to on a daily basis.

And so it makes a huge impact. And then if we think about kind of that outer network, who are our friends, who are our strong supports, who are professional acquaintances and thinking about our social lives, there was a study also done several years ago that looked at social isolation and kind of the impacts that that has. And they found that people who were socially isolated, the mortality rate across all reasons, all causes of death increased was higher by 39%. So 39% more likely to lose life over something if socially isolated.

And then, ironically, they looked just into a specific cause of death and really a specific disease, coronary heart disease. So really, the problems with the heart. 4 times more likely to pass away with that disease if they didn't have a network around them. 4 times less likely. So there are clearly statistics, and, you know, in that network, an anecdotal story I'll tell you is there was a period of my time, early in my recovery where I wanted to call it quits. I couldn't imagine going back to using drugs and alcohol because of just all the people who had done so much for me and the guilt and shame and remorse that I felt, thankfully, felt ahead of time.

But I couldn't imagine continuing my life either. So the way out there looked like, to me, my life needed to end. And I made a, what I call a life saving call to my buddy Jay, and, you know, told him I was in a really bad spot, I didn't know what I was going to do. And he said, come on over, we're going to fix this. We're going to be all right. And we just did some work. We got deep into it. But it was that call. If I didn't make that call, I don't know if I'm here today, and if he wasn't on the other end, I don't know if I'm here today.

So, again, family, family, creating that. And I know it's not the same for everyone. It can be a little more challenging. Family ties can get broken. Mine were my family, I'll say, for lack of better terms, has disowned me because I was the unique one in the family that got into drugs. So I had a lot of reason not to go back to those ties, but I did, and I created them, and I get intentional about it. You know, I often hear people talk about, I'm not going to do as much work as someone else. I'm not going to do more work for a relationship than someone else.

And I wrote a medium article not long ago, and one of the points was, that's not me. I'm willing to step out there to be vulnerable, to put more work in, because we all win at the end of the day. And most of my relationships wouldn't exist in the way they do. If I didn't take that action, that's the family. And then that outer network, just as critical sometimes, because those are the people who understand me the way my brain is wired, and they can keep me in check professionally, personally and beyond.

So again, think about who's your person? Who are your people that you would call in a crisis moment? Because that's what matters. We're all going to experience some version of that, and hopefully you can answer that question a little bit better now, understanding really the evidence that's behind creating community. Look forward to seeing you for pillar number four coming soon. That's purpose.