Harm Reduction as Recovery: How Lived and Living Experiences Shape BeHERE’s Approach to Training
Editor’s Note: Every September, Recovery Month gives us an opportunity to reflect on what it means to recover, to heal, and to grow as individuals, communities, and systems navigating substance use and mental health. At BeHERE Training, we don’t wait for a national observance to have these conversations. Recovery, and all its complexities, is at the heart of what we do every single day. In this essay, Gracie Rolfe, a leader of our BeHERE Training team, discusses how lived and living experience are core parts of BeHERE Training.
Gracie Rolfe leading a training.
What happens when our conception of recovery is overly restricted? Nearly all of us—whether through media, a loved one, or direct participation in a recovery process—have had a picture of recovery painted for us. In some of these pictures, the boundaries of recovery are drawn narrowly: abstaining from all substances, participating in a specific program, adhering to a particular set of values or beliefs. But many people might struggle to color within these lines. And that’s okay.
At BeHERE, we see recovery as a process of reconnection: to self, safety, community, and purpose. The Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration defines recovery as, “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.” We use that definition at BeHERE to recognize recovery is about increasing wellness, stability, and options, whatever that looks like for an individual. For one person, recovery may mean not using any substances at all, for another, it may mean adjusting or changing how they use drugs, for a third it could also mean reevaluating and understanding their relationship to substances in a more productive way. Being “in recovery” means something different for each person.
We resist the urge to define recovery in binary terms: “clean” or “not,” “sober” or “using.” These labels erase nuance and can exclude people who are actively making life-affirming changes that don’t fit a traditional mold. As harm reductionist Dan Bigg said “any positive change as a person defines it for themselves is our definition of recovery.”
BeHERE believes that recovery is about movement—small, intentional shifts that improve someone’s quality of life, dignity, and ability to show up in the world. When you start from this place of understanding, harm reduction isn’t separate from recovery; it is essential to it.
Harm reduction approaches consider these movements by dealing fully with the world and the way people move through it. It incorporates a spectrum of strategies to meet people where they are at, while also addressing the conditions of use along with the use itself. Our approach at BeHERE Training attends to the fullness of people, or their lived and living experience. Lived experience refers to real-life knowledge that comes from surviving and navigating substance use, mental health challenges, systems involvement, trauma, and marginalization. Living experience recognizes that for many, these things are current realities.
If the goal of training is to change how people think, feel, and act, then having training facilitators with lived and living experience is one of the most powerful tools we have to combat stigma and change the narrative around substance use.
For our training team, lived and living experience shapes our curriculum, language, real-world examples, and the way we show up. Lived and living experience turn abstract ideas into actionable insight; we recognize them as types of expertise. They challenge outdated narratives, foster empathy, disrupt stigma, and ensure trainings aren’t just about people with substance use or mental health histories—but for them, by them, and with them. If the goal of training is to change how people think, feel, and act, then having training facilitators with lived and living experience is one of the most powerful tools we have to combat stigma and change the narrative around substance use.
We seek out the expertise of lived and living experience by including people from across the spectrum of recovery. Our team includes those living in recovery; those with histories of problematic substance use; people who have been incarcerated and impacted by criminal legal systems; and people with close proximities to substance use, overdose, and addiction. This requires intentional involvement of people with lived and living experience in our curriculum development and training implementation.
Our training philosophy adheres to the principles found in Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s philosophy is rooted in the belief that education must be grounded in the lived experiences of people. For Freire, a liberatory education cannot be imposed from the top-down but must be co-created through a dialogical process in which everyone’s voice is valued. We challenged ourselves as a team to deeply consider what “qualified” means. Are we prioritizing degrees over depth? Are we listening to the people most impacted by the issues we’re addressing? Are we building trainings that serve the real world—or just the status quo? We challenge other organizations to consider the same questions in their own spaces.
Being in recovery is not a person’s only identity and it is not always a static identity.
Diversity of experience strengthens everything we do. Our team includes people with lived and living experience with drug use, people in recovery, social workers, recovery supporters and coaches, substance use helpline specialists, harm reductionists, nurses, career trainers, capacity builders, communications professionals, and combinations of it all.
Being in recovery is not a person’s only identity and it is not always a static identity. Recovery is often a lifelong commitment to healing, reflection, and growth. We honor how this journey manifests in people’s lives; acknowledging that strategies we may have used at one point in our lives may no longer serve us or help us the same way in other moments. That is why we emphasize that both harm reduction and recovery exist on a non-linear spectrum. Our trainers model this not just in what they teach, but in how they teach: with empathy, flexibility, transparency, and deep respect for the people in the room.
Many of our training participants are frontline workers, peer specialists, case managers, community health workers, or people with lived experience themselves. When they see trainers who reflect their own journeys, it changes the training experience. BeHERE trainings are designed to be interactive, nonjudgmental, and grounded in real-life complexity. Whether we’re facilitating sessions on harm reduction, trauma-informed care, de-escalation, or motivational interviewing, we make space for everyone’s truth, especially those who often feel unseen in professional or clinical environments.
Behavioral health systems, and the trainings that support them, have historically marginalized the very people they aim to serve. Too often, lived experience is treated as anecdotal or optional, rather than as the essential expertise it is. By centering lived and living experience BeHERE disrupts patterns of exclusion and dismissal.
As the field of behavioral health continues to evolve, we are reminded that the most effective solutions are often shaped by those who have lived or are living them. Training that is rooted in this experience brings a depth of insight, credibility, and connection that cannot be replicated through theory alone. If we are serious about building services that are responsive, equitable, and impactful, then those with lived and living experience must not only be at the table. They must design the table.
