“finger pointing,” Tuck said.
Recordings of real people and their challenges with addiction are collected by Viacom and uploaded to the website. Designed as a megaphone for empathy, the site allows visitors to listen to stories of addiction and to find treatment resources they need to recover.
“We want to spread hope,” Tuck said. “There is life after recovery, life after treatment. We created the website, which provides the resources. We created a series of PSAs. We want to relaunch the website with a more community feel. It’s really an awareness campaign.”
Tuck said her team hopes the campaign will be a catalyst for addiction treatment.
With the assets of the Surgeon General and Facing Addiction, which Hood said is “essentially the American Cancer Society of addiction space,” LISTEN has the ability to influence people and put an end to the stigma and ignorance that surrounds addiction.
The campaign is not a substitute for treatment, but rather a way to embolden people to engage in addiction recovery. “It’s very important to make clear [the campaign] is absolutely not therapy,” Tuck said. “We are trying to empower and encourage people. It’s just another form of getting the message out there. This is all a complement to therapy.”
Author: Ryan Beitler
An editor and contributor to Addiction Now, Ryan Beitler is a journalist, fiction writer, musician, and travel writer. He has written for Paste Magazine, OC Weekly, numerous addiction recovery publications, and his travel blog Our Little Blue Rock. He lives in Southern California. Contact Ryan at ryanrbeitler@gmail.com or ryanb@addictionnow.com.
