On Tuesday’s class Robert Ashford, Recovery Scientist and PhD candidate at University of the Sciences, came to talk about the linguistic research and applications surrounding recovery. Specifically, he came to tell us how to talk about addiction/recovery and how not to. Terms like “addict”, “medication-assisted treatment”, and others became the focus of the conversation, and inspired a lively discussion about the usage and stigma attached to some of the words.

Though I have my personal ideas on each word, and with the methodology of the studies presented, I think it’s important to take Robert and all of our speakers’ perspectives into consideration. Ultimately, these will impact our editorial decision making throughout this project, so it’s important to know why (or why not) these words should be included or excluded from our final product.