What does CCAR do - and why do these things matter?

The Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR):

• Advocates at the state level for policies and priorities that are pro-recovery. Why? Because a pro-recovery agenda is fiscally sound and socially wise.
  Recovered alcoholics and addicts hold jobs, pay taxes, raise families and contribute. A pro-recovery agenda has significant long-term advantages for Connecticut. It increases the state's economic productivity; reduces stress on families; saves untold millions of dollars in addiction-related healthcare costs; and substantially reduces such social ills as theft, abuse, crimes of violence, and drunk driving.
  Tens of thousands of Connecticut residents are already in recovery and back at work. Thousands more are ready to recover but still need basic help, such as a bed in a treatment facility.
  Connecticut's ongoing budget crisis continues to be a major obstacle. Legislators find recovery programs an easy target for cuts. The thinking is, "You did this to yourself. And we don't want to pay for it anymore." The powerful stigma attached to alcohol and drug addiction continues to bend policy across America, gambling far more money on punishment and prisons than on recovery.
  Even so, progress is happening. Every year CCAR provides expert testimony for state lawmakers, in an effort to retain state-funded treatment programs. Working closely with the state's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, CCAR is ever-so-slowly changing Connecticut's system of care to one that is recovery oriented.
  
  
• Holds monthly meetings in the Greater Hartford Area and six other locations convenient to large population centers. CCAR, has a headquarters in Wethersfield and chapters in Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, and Willimantic. The chapters are "peer led" and "peer driven" by people in recovery and their family members. The chapters provide life skills training, support groups with trained facilitators, peer-to-peer advice, referrals, shoulders to lean and cry on.
  
  
• Develops and delivers dozens of useful training programs annually to those in recovery as well as to healing professionals and counselors, like clergy, who are working in the field of addiction. Example: Getting Comfortable: The Nuts & Bolts of Healthy Relationships in Recovery.
  
  
• Puts a public face on recovery by testifying before the legislature and state commissions, as well as through well-attended public events like CCAR's annual "Recovery Walks!" which attracts several thousand supporters. CCAR members are familiar faces at the statehouse, talking authentically and authoritatively about the addicted life and recovery. The state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) leans on CCAR for expertise, insights and recommendations on how to improve the chances for long-term recovery.
  
  
• Maintains an informative Website, providing 24/7 online access to links, advice, facts, contacts.
  
  CCAR's bottom line:
  
  
• We help save lives - and that could include the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents still addicted to drugs or alcohol.
  
  
• We help stop crime - because much crime is closely associated with addiction and drunkenness.
  
  
• We help save families through support groups that put an end to isolation and offer understanding instead of disapproval.
  
  
• We certainly could save the state's taxpayers millions and millions of dollars, if the state adopted informed and consistent pro-recovery policies and funding priorities.

CCAR Vision

CCAR Mission

Each and every person in the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery will strive to ensure that people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction will be treated with dignity and respect in their recovery process regardless of the type of addiction, treatment or support. We seek to involve recovering people, their families, significant others and friends in educating policy makers, services providers, legislators and the general public about the addiction recovery process. Our goal is to empower recovering people in their physical, emotional and spiritual growth and provide the opportunity for them to make significant contributions to themselves, their families and our society.

Over the years, we have gathered and written a lot of stuff about CCAR, click here if you want to read more....