MOVIES and DOCUMENTARIES

(2021). "Addiction is an all-encompassing force in not only the lives of the afflicted, but also those around them. OUR AMERICAN FAMILY is a radically honest portrait of five family members grappling with the legacy of generational addiction as they fight to heal resentments and pull each other out of the deepest depths." Read more here!

WATCH THE TRAILER

ART

We are always looking for artists to contribute to our gallery. If you would like to submit art, poetry, or other visual media to be featured on our website, please email us at iqrr@vtc.vt.edu.

Featured Artists

William Stoehr- Stigma and Survival

William Stoehr's current work focuses on addiction and stigma with its victims, witnesses, and survivors. His art is exhibited internationally at a number of venues including universities, museums, and galleries.

William Stoehr wrote of his work: "Stigma suffocates discussion, blocks action, causes pain. I want to use my art to normalize the discussion and to help erase the stigma. My sister OD'd but, maybe to the millions affected, I can be a part of a solution. Stigma is the place to start."

Dr. Nora Volkow, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse for the National Institutes of Health, wrote of Stoehr's work: "The first step toward alleviating stigma is helping people understand that substance use disorders are a medical condition, and not a moral failing. We must encourage people to talk about the disease. We must learn to see people with substance use disorders as human beings just like us and understand that addiction is a disease like hypertension or cancer -something that needs treatment, and compassion."

To learn more visit William's website: https://www.williamstoehrart.com/stigma

Debra Keirce

Debra Keirce has a story that is her reason for creating each original oil painting in her Northern Virginia studios. She insists that her stories are just the jumping-off point though. Her hope is that every collector experiences her fine art in a way that allows them to finish or rewrite the stories she starts.

Debra is an internationally acclaimed and collected master artist. She paints in a classical realism style. Her art ranges from miniature palm sized pieces created under lighted magnifiers, up to four foot tall mantle sized works. Debra's art is in permanent collections of museums in Montana and Tennessee, and corporate collections in Amazon Web Services. She is also represented by four reputable galleries, and three juried societies. She is an active signature member of several art societies.

Debra's art relates to addiction because as far back as can be traced, five generations at least, both her maternal and paternal relatives have been impacted by severe alcoholism. The disease has shortened lives, broken families apart, and wreaked devastation on the people she holds most dear.

Much of her art has a story thread about how there is great beauty and joy, even in dark places. Her pub scenes show the reflections and abstract color shapes that decorate walls and countertops that hear the achievements AND the losses of alcoholics daily. Her cocktail glasses hold candy bars or flowers because even though alcoholism is a tough hand to be dealt, people so often rise above the disease and put much beauty and good into the world.

There is a stigma associated with addiction, and it hampers communication. Debra believes that recovery is hard enough, without the fact that our culture in North America has a deep misunderstanding of it. She has seen firsthand that you don't need childhood trauma to be an alcoholic. You don't choose to be an alcoholic. You can't just say no to drugs and alcohol if you are an alcoholic. There but for the grace of God, you are NOT an alcoholic if you don't understand this in every cell in your being.

Through her art, Keirce conveys experiences. She wants for people to enjoy the beauty with all of their senses. She wants for collectors to feel the emotions, but walk away smiling and hopeful.

To learn more, visit her website at www.DebKArt.com

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BOOKS

Sober & Out is a collection of stories by AA members who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (and a few friends) from the pages of AA Grapevine. They share their experience, strength and hope with alcoholism as well as their personal struggles and hard-fought triumphs. The stories in this book show that—like most alcoholics—LGBT AAs struggle to fit in, stay sober and find peace in their lives. By working the Steps, following the Traditions, doing service, and finding a Higher Power, they are now living sober in the Fellowship of AA.

PURCHASE

MUSIC

This playlist includes some of our favorite addiction recovery music across various genres

PODCASTS

That Sober Guy Podcast

In 2014 after a 17-year struggle with alcohol, Shane Ramer started That Sober Guy Podcast to help bring awareness to an issue that over 90 million men in the US struggle with. That Sober Guy is a top rated podcast with over 2 million listeners and helps thousands of men quit drinking.

POETRY

BLESSING OF HOPE

- Jan Richardson, from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

So may we know
the hope
that is not just
for someday
but for this day—
here, now,
in this moment
that opens to us:

hope not made
of wishes
but of substance,

hope made of sinew
and muscle
and bone,

hope that has breath
and a beating heart,

hope that will not
keep quiet
and be polite,

hope that knows
how to holler
when it is called for,

hope that knows
how to sing
when there seems
little cause,

hope that raises us
from the dead—

not someday
but this day,
every day,
again and
again and
again.

Lectures at the fralin biomedical research institute