Chris interviews Jason Schwartz, Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. Chris and his research partner, Boyd Pickard, were visiting Jason in Dearborn, MI to present The History of Narcotics Anonymous at Dawn Farm’s Community Education Series back in March 2016. Dawn Farm is a 501c(3) nonprofit addiction treatment center with an emphasis on the recovering community as the most important source of healing and recovery support for their clients. Dawn Farm is a real animal farm, established in 1977, and they offer a continuum of addiction treatment and recovery support services, including: Residential Treatment, Detoxification, Outpatient Services, and Transitional Housing.

Jason outlines the transformative process Dawn Farm underwent in response to an honest, slightly painful, and potentially shameful critique from their larger community.  This trajectory changing town hall meeting consisted of referral resources, former clients, local government, the recovery community and area universities.  Fortunately, Jason and his staff also had recovery researcher Bill White in attendance. Despite the understandable blow felt by Jason and his colleagues, Bill saw these discoveries as a unique opportunity to develop and grow as an organization. Later, this process of conducting a fearless and searching organizational inventory followed by a willingness to change became coined “Clinical Humility” in a groundbreaking Bill White blog, featuring a public amends by Chris Budnick.