21-Day Recovery Resources JUUST Living and Moore Challenge©
“We need to heal. If we do not heal, we doom future generations.” Dr. Joy Degruy
This 21-Day Recovery Resources Challenge is for folx in recovery who are looking for racial equity resources to challenge you in your thinking about white supremacy culture and the devastation it has wrought, especially upon Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) bodies, minds and spirits. This 21-Day Challenge will help you connect with contemporary BIPOC recovery resources that will complement your recovery through historical understanding of the failed drug war, learning about disproportionate access to services and how to become a co-conspirator in creating the #MooreBeautiful and just world we all know is possible.
For too long, the recovery field has been dominated solely by the 12 step movement and the archaic drug treatment industry movement, which was created by and for upper-middle-class cis-white-het men and sustained through drug war policies and economic privilege. Historically, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folx have been uncomfortable, isolated, unwelcomed and underrepresented in recovery support settings. We are grateful that it is changing in some ways, and for the multiple pathways to recovery. (Many of us are also grateful for the 12 step movement that has saved our own and so many other lives.) Our goal here is to open up recovery resources, beyond the traditional Euro-centric 20th century recovery movement. We’re open to #MooreSuggestions!
Whether you are one of the Global Majority or White, we hope you find something here.
Get Started
Commit. Choose an Activity. Complete. Reflect. Repeat.
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Individuals
Jump right in! You pick your start day and commit to one of the 9 action categories below on each of those days… yes, it is that simple to get started! The hope is that you will change things up based on your schedule, commitment, and understanding, so you will be able to attempt all activity types.
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Groups or Organizations
Use our Copyright and Recognition Page to get started on the planning and advertising, so your group is cohesive in your approach to the 21-Day Action Plan. Use our Facebook page or Prohabits to stay engaged with each other. As a group you can select which action type and resource to complete as a group or have individuals select for themselves. We have found engagement occurs either way. It is a good idea to plan a pre and post survey and discussion as a group to assess skills building and which challenge you will do next!
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Adapters
We encourage organizations to make the challenge fit their audience. Using the structure, intent, and resources within the 21-Day Action Plans, you can adjust daily design, prompts, or how you choose to reflect and engage as a group. Click HERE for adaptation ideas and examples of how communities are adapting the challenge to meet their specific social justice focus. Remember the required recognition. Reach out to us with your adaptations, so we can share with others.
Choose One Activity Per Day
To further your understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity.
Read: Encounter new writers and ideas from a range of media sources.
How I’m Learning to Be a Black, Sober, and Sex-Positive Lesbian by Nia Tucker
How Sobriety Allows Me To Do Anti-Racism Work by Priscila Garcia-Jacquier
Addiction in the African American Community: The Recovery Legacies of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X by William L. White, Mark Sanders and Tanya Sanders
White People go to Rehab, Black People go to Jail by Amy Dresner and Joe Schrank
Recovery Equity is Better than “One Size Fits All” Sobriety Dr. Eddie Moore Jr & Ryan Hampton
The War on Drugs That Wasn't: Wasted Whiteness, “Dirty Doctors,” and Race in Media Coverage of Prescription Opioid Misuseby Julie Netherland, PhD, Deputy State Director and Helena B. Hansen, MD PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology
The Future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma informed care to healing centered engagement by Shawn Ginwright
Crack wasn’t the real problem by Dr Karl Hart
How to make anti-racist work a part of you recovery program by Nicole Slaughter Graham
The First Step to Recovery is Admitting your not Powerless over your Privilege by Jessica Hoppe
a word for white people, in two parts poem by adrienne maree brown
Why Aren’t There More People of Color in the Recovery Movement?
Listen in on the kinds of open, honest conversations that too many of us avoid having.
- Standing Rock and beyond (52 minutes)
- Letter From Birmingham Jail (55 minutes)
- Systemic Racism and Addiction: What’s the Connection?
- Addiction & Recovery Sermon - Jesse Heffernan RCP Helios Recovery
Watch and learn. We've offered everything from short videos to full-length films.
The Art of Recovery, African American. DiversiTV, Lane Community College Media Services. Host Mark Harris, interviews artist Craig Lasha. (58 minutes) Art history month, highlighting artists and the art that is born from addiction
Art Woodard, CCAR Recovery Coach, series of webinars: CARE of the SOUL in the Coronavirus Cocoon for Recovery Coaches. Hour-long, each one. Rest in Peace, Art Woodard, who passed in 2020.
Colors of Recovery - NAATP
The War on Drugs Explained - PA Harm Reduction Coalition & Legal Action Center
Johann Hari: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
Telling the Truth: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Addiction Recovery World - Phillip Ruttherford of FAVOR
Crash the movie. The team curating this page had mixed feelings about this movie. Here is a good blog post about the complications.
Documentary “Coded Bias”
Moonlight, the movie
Notice: Why didn’t I see this sooner? It’s easy to overlook what we’re not looking for.
Once people start to learn about white privilege and America’s systems of oppression through history, they often ask, “Why didn’t I see this sooner?” It’s easy to overlook what we’re not looking for. Once you understand the phenomenon of selective noticing, take yourself on a noticing adventure.
- Take care of yourself.
- Choose your spiritual practice: daily, reflective, with a teacher or accountability partner:
- Movement / meditation / creative self-expression
- Breathwork is Radical Self Care for BIPOC
- BIPOC Only - Recovery Dharma Online
- Continue to learn about the cultural context in which racism and the “drug war” and “mass incarceration” are inextricable.
- Race and the Drug War
- Convey to all in your circle that all lives won’t matter until Black and brown lives matter equally as much as white lives historically have.
Follow Racial Justice activists, educators, organizations, and movements on social media.
Consider connecting with any of the people you learn about in the above resources. Here are more ideas to widen your circle of who you follow. Pro Tip: check out who these organizations follow, quote, repost, and retweet to find more people to follow.
For each of the below we recommend going to the website and from there linking to the social media platforms each person/organization uses.
- Sober Brown Girls
- Recovery Organization Resources
- The Privilege Institute
- Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr
- The Temper
- Anti-Oppression Resources, Somatic Experiencing: not recovery-oriented, but somatic trauma healing, which is important for everyone with addictions.
- Mālama Project - Mālama Project seeks to provide a space where all students in recovery can feel safe, accepted, understood, and empowered. Cultural sensitivity and congruent practices, grounded in traditional Hawaiian values, are embedded in Mālama Projects practice. Mālama Project embraces all forms of recovery and students at any point in their journey.
- Recovery for The Revolution
- The Wellness Coop - Recovery support services for BIPOC folx seeking or in recovery from Substance Use Disorder.
Engage in racially mixed settings. Be a learner more than a knower.
This can be the hardest part for people new to racial justice work. Engaging in racially mixed settings can trigger age-old power and privilege dynamics. The goal is to be a learner more than a knower, exactly the opposite of what dominant U.S. culture teaches us to be.
Be the learner by understanding there are Multiple Pathways of Recovery:
White Bison, The Red Road to Wellbriety
Women for Sobriety helping women discover a happy New Life in recovery
Millati Islami Recovery - for Muslims
SMART Recovery - Science based, self-empowered
Celebrate Recovery - Christian 12 step program
Refuge Recovery - Buddhist based recovery program
Life Ring Recovery - Secular Recovery program
Recovery Dharma - Buddhist based recovery program
JACS: Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others
Act: Flex your skills. Take action to interrupt power and privilege dynamics.
Actions to consider:
- Invite friend(s), family, and/or colleagues to do this challenge with you.
- Prepare yourself to interrupt racial jokes. Click HERE for some advice about how.
- Interrupt the pattern of white silence by speaking openly with family, friends, and colleagues about what you’re doing and learning in this challenge.
- Invite friend(s), family, and/or colleagues to join you for one or more of your daily “to-do’s” for a low-threshold invitation into the work and introduction to the 21-Day Challenge.
- Does your school, workplace, or faith group have an Equity Committee? Share this with them. Can they make it a school wide initiative? Particularly in the fall when two especially oppressive holidays happen?
- Create a PSA (Public Service Announcement) poster or video:
- Describe stereotypes in your environment (grocery stores, party/costume shops, books, movies/cartoons/television, etc.)
- Explain the stereotype
- Correct misinformation
- Offer a challenge to dismantle stereotypes (i.e.: stop buying product)
Reflect on what you choose to do, what you’re learning, and how you are feeling.
Reflecting and Journaling is a crucial piece of the challenge. Plan to take time everyday to reflect on what you chose to do, what you’re learning, and how you are feeling. Difficult emotions such as shame and anger, though uncomfortable to feel, can guide you to deeper self-awareness about how power and privilege impacts you and the people in your life. At the very least, use the “Reflect” space on the reflecting journal tool.
Use our tracking tool to stay on track and be able to reflect back at the end.
(Tip: diversify your habits by doing some of each.)
Create a Soundtrack4Justice playlist that fuels you and/or can serve as a conversation starter with people of all ages.
Let the music move you!
Create a Soundtrack4Justice playlist that fuels you and/or can serve as a conversation starter with people of all ages.
You can find ours on Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music.
- Sober - Ryan Cassata
- John Doe - B.o.B
- Queer Artists in Recovery
- Leave a Light On - Tom Walker
- What’s going on - Marvin Gaye
- A change is gonna come - Sam Cooke
- Mississippi Goddam - Nina Simone
- Black Man - Stevie Wonder
- Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday
- I’m black and I’m proud - James Brown
- Death of Emmett Till - Bob Dylan
- White Privilege / Mackelmore
- White Privilege II / Macklemore
- Ok not to Be OK - Demi Lovato & Marshmellow
- 1800-273-8255 - Logic ft. Alessia Cara & Khalid
- Life - Ivy Sole ft. Dave B.
- 24/7 - Kehlani
- We Shall Be Known by the company we keep (Thrive Choir)
- Calling All Warriors (Thrive Choir)

Guidelines:
If you are using, revising or editing the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge © content created by Dr. Eddie Moore Jr. and his team at The Privilege Institute, giving credit to the creators is required. Remember, now more than ever, you/your organization must always give credit for the social justice tools/ideas created by BIPOC folks doing and leading Antiracist work. We’ve made it easy to give the proper recognition to be used on websites, social media sites, in email communication, during interviews and/or infomercials. Click HERE for our copyright information and tools to incorporate the required recognition in your plan. We are committed to offering the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge © free of charge. We are constantly enhancing the materials, monitoring social media pages, responding to inquiries/questions, and Moore.