Prevention Point‘s Freddie Laboy came to speak with our class on Tuesday about medication-assisted treatment and his experience working as a certified recovery specialist. A hallmark of Laboy’s work is providing peer support to people with addictions. He said is job is to show people hope where there is none and help them function in society again.

Laboy said he tries to draw a comparison for people with addictions so they can see they can be productive members in society post-incarceration. He tells them that every time they go to prison they become a productive member of society because they have a purpose: to get home as soon as possible. Laboy works to instill hope in his peers and help them see they have been productive parts of society before in this way. His goal is to help them transfer that over to everyday life.

According to Laboy, there is a huge stigma against people in the recovery community who are on medication-assisted treatment. Due to lack of education, recovery houses don’t want to people on medication-assisted treatment because they don’t consider them to be sober. The stereotype we know of people using medication-assisted treatment is based on people who abuse their medication or take it with other drugs. Laboy said he thinks the stigma would change if recovery houses begin to accept people using medication for addiction treatment.

For some people, medication-assisted treatment can be a longterm solution. A new support group called Medication-Assisted Recovery Anonymous has started in Philadelphia, showing it is starting to become more normalized in society to take medication for addiction treatment, especially for opioid addiction. MARA was started because users who went to other anonymous recovery meetings weren’t considered sober. They wouldn’t be able to even get sponsors because they were told they weren’t embracing recovery.

MARA meets every Wednesday at 7 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church on the 4400 block of Frankford Avenue.