Maya Hambright, MD
My work partner and I started a mindfulness-based recovery center and it tore us apart. I grew my family medicine practice in upstate New York into a recovery-based practice as heroin overdoses devastated the community.
In the early days, a mother of one of my patients told me that paramedics walked (rather than ran) into her house the last time they were called (it was the fourth time) and didn't give her son Narcan. He died that night. The stigma has decreased since then, and I now hear many stories of paramedics who have bonded with families and are checking in on those whose lives they've saved.
We have options now that were unheard of just a few years ago: Narcan infusion like insulin in a pump, intravenous injection sites in New York City, police partnering with community organizations and driving people to recovery centers.
Heavily I think of the lives we have lost to stigma. (And I cannot even begin to discuss the stigma and racism and criminalization of the crack user in the 1980s — a topic for another essay.)
We created our center as a free walk-in outreach program rooted in mindfulness — a Buddhist approach to recovery grounded in trauma-informed care, meditation, acceptance forgiveness, and compassion — with yoga,
