Change in the New Year

As we enter a new year, change is absolutely everywhere you look, from a new White House to fresh crops of marijuana on the west coast . . . and just about everything in between. 

None of us can predict with any kind of certainty what we’ll be seeing on the political, economic, national, and international fronts, or what the costs and benefits of legalized marijuana in a growing number of states will be, so I’ll just stick with a couple of changes that are clearer and closer to home.

First, we begin with this issue to bring our readers a new section: U.S. Journal Training Conference Reports, with highlights from our most recent professional training conference (in this case, the 7th Western Conference on Behavioral Health and Addictive Disorders held this past October in Newport Beach, California).

This new initiative is designed to merge our Counselor readership with the estimated three thousand professionals who annually attend our eight or more conferences throughout the country. The schedule for this year’s events can be seen on the inside back cover. 

This issue of Counselor features one last contribution by William White, who has graced the pages of this magazine with his interviews with dozens of noted leaders in our field for many years. Bill himself will be the subject of an interview with incoming contributor, Dr. Andrea Barthwell in our April issue.

On behalf of all our readers, we thank Bill for being an integral part of Counselor magazine. An emeritus senior research consultant at Chestnut Health Systems/Lighthouse Institute and past-chair of the board of Recovery Communities United, Bill has a master’s degree in addiction studies and has worked full-time in the addiction field since 1969 as a streetworker, counselor, clinical director, researcher, and well-traveled trainer and consultant. He has authored or coauthored more than four hundred articles, monographs, research reports, book chapters, and eighteen books. His book Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America received the McGovern Family Foundation Award for the best book on addiction recovery. Bill’s contributions have been acknowledged by awards from the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP), the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD), NAADAC: The Association of Addiction Professionals, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), and the Native American Wellbriety Movement.

While we will miss his interviews in Counselor, Bill continues to write about the history of treatment and recovery on his website: www.williamwhitepapers.com. 

We wish all our readers and U.S. Journal Training conference alumni a blessed and healthy New Year, and, as always, we invite your evaluations, letters, ideas, and even prognostications.