BIGVISION Foundation

BIGVISION had a pivotal year. The COVID-19 crisis was a devastating blow to the world and had an exponentially deleterious effect on those in recovery, or acutely suffering from addiction.  The group that we serve relies on carefully crafted coping mechanisms that depend on community and support systems, but 2020 pulled the rug out from under us. 

BIGVISON saw a silver lining: we were called to grow.  2020 highlighted how well our approach works and how easily we can bring life-changing support to those who need it.  We are dedicated to sustaining recovery for as many people as possible and expediting our scale and impact to do so. 

As this year has shown us, every time we reach out, greater and more imperative needs come into our line of sight.  The Elevate Prize would help us fund better platforms for our content, support outreach efforts to heighten our visibility, hire additional recovery community staff, attract the highest-level subject matter experts, raise the organizational leadership skill level, and catapult our reach.  We need this boost to advance our funding and our know-how to make this greater impact a reality.

I woke up in 2009 with my life circling the drain. Addiction and depression were killing me. I knew of rehab but not recovery. I needed transformative change but had never heard the term.

I threw myself into treatment and found inspiration to dedicate my life to helping others. Becoming a licensed clinician, entering a field of the blind leading the blind, I soon realized personally and professionally that the bar was set incredibly low. Abstinence was not enough for me. I was a lifestyle guy- a prior career in action sports and volunteer firefighting gave me a hunger for purpose and fulfillment. I needed a “why” beneath “what” that didn’t exist in traditional substance abuse treatment and recovery programs.

Through years of clinical practice, I integrated experiential elements into a model of recovery lifestyle. Through research and lived experience, lifestyle changes have shown to have an equal or greater impact on the sustainability of recovery and better outcomes than anything clinical.  With BIGVISON, I am championing these practices, developing an ecosystem approach, and uncovering the keys to sober lifestyle and destigmatization. With the opioid epidemic devastating the country, we need to bring this working approach to more people, now.

Almost everyone has been, or knows someone who has been, affected by addiction.  Unfortunately, these stories are not rare - there are millions of families across America who are going through similar, heartbreaking, and tragic instances of their own.  According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health the prevalence of substance abuse has increased substantially, with continued growth in the rate of fatal overdoses. 2020 was unfortunately, although predictably, a record year - over 90,000 people died of overdoses, with 46 states documenting a devastating increase from 2019.  The CDC’s 2021 report identified a 7.4% increase in overdose deaths – another 6,000 lives lost to this epidemic. 

Our community uses experiences and connections to develop an exciting and fulfilling recovery lifestyle- the missing link that sustains sobriety.  Our core competency is integrating experiential activities with community connection to cultivate a vibrant, purpose-filled climate. BIGVISION provides a comprehensive  array of services from experiential recreational events, educational workshops, community support  groups and family/stakeholder engagement, both in-person and through an expanding virtual platform.  We are there, with and for our community when they need it: every minute engaging with BIGVISION is a minute spent sustaining recovery.

On top of our many initiatives, our goal is to impact the landscape of addiction recovery. This space needs an empowering paradigm of treatment and sobriety to eliminate associated stigmas. The status quo is not enough – BIGVISION is leading the charge to build a new normal of progress and progression that tracks with science and medicine. Just as addiction is most often a symptom of a greater problem, we get to the why beneath the what providing purpose and stoke.

The core of BIGVISION’s mission is disruption, while we are working against a fractured system, inherent in our disruption is an objective to collaborate and cooperate.  Reversing the opioid crisis is going to take people coming together to create a new normal, building a new path to sustained recovery to bridge the gap between successful treatment and engrained lifestyle change.  BIGVISION is putting our power and investment into the proven method of integrating experiential elements into a model of recovery lifestyle.  Building shareable and scalable strategies to help people near and far realize the systematic change in their life- and person by person, family by family, we will move the needle down from 200 overdose deaths per day.

The opioid relapse statistics wouldn’t be acceptable in any other disease or facet of healthcare performance.  Over 90,000 deaths, 90% relapse rate after treatment, 57% of young adults with mental illness suffering from addiction. The stigma surrounding addiction and recovery adds a dehumanizing factor: until it hits them personally, people don’t tend to care about this devastating epidemic.   

The world lost over 90,000 individuals in 2020 to overdoses: mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, coworkers, and friends.  We are putting the spotlight back on the people, helping to lift them up, and show the world the power and promise and strength of a someone who can overcome this disease. 

Pre-COVID, BIGVISION mainly reached young adults in New York City in-person, engaging roughly 500 participants through a diverse set of events (sober dance parties, wellness fairs, rock climbing, basketball tournaments, etc.).  The impacts of COVID had a drastic effect on how we engage with and serve our community, and therefore our numbers are in flux this year.

The isolation of COVID-19 drove us to all virtual outreach. Our services were both in greater demand (higher rates of relapse and overdose due to greater mental health challenges), and expanding in reach (we could now engage potential community members without geographic limits). Based on analytics and insights, we estimate our virtual reach to have engaged over 10,000 people with daily and weekly check-ins, yoga, knitting, and other online engagements.

In 2021, BIGVISION hopes to rebuild its in-person event audience to 1,500 and grow online engagement by 50% to connect with 15,000 participants (16,500 people in total).  We have a three-pronged approach: ramping back up to in-person engagement levels, engaging family units by incorporating stakeholders into events, and leveraging the new virtual audience to build a national and international network of members in active recovery.  

My impact goals are to save lives and heal social ecosystems through disruption and innovation. To paradigm shift the ways in which we treat and view addiction recovery.

The UN Development Goal Targets we focus on are 3.4 and 3.5 - both working toward strengthening the prevention and treatment of substance abuse and premature deaths resulting from the opioid crisis.  Tragically, as it stands, most people in recovery slip. Prevailing data shows 90% of opiate users will relapse within the first week after discharge from treatment. Our goal is to flip the stats to 90% success rates as a result  of innovation, science, and community. 

Meaningful experiences and connections not only sustain recovery, but break down stigmatizations and shift the paradigm from punishment to prospects. Life in recovery can be exciting, vibrant and fulfilling. We are working to establish “Recovery Lifestyle” as its own scalable modality, which can then be standardized on a global level to ensure best practices.  When stigmatizations break down we will be able to treat addiction issues before they progress. Currently we wait for crisis stage or hitting bottom instead of following the trends of early intervention and prevention as modeled in modern medicine.

The stigmas around recovery and addiction, coupled with ineffective interventions and obsolete treatment models are the greatest barriers. Within the recovery community, there is an ideological, one-size-fits all approach that doesn’t allow for flexibility in protocol. One way is their only way. Culturally, it remains a great challenge to build mainstream support around the issues that are traditionally seen as deviant, “a choice,” or hopeless. Additionally, with a team of only five (four paid and one unpaid), we are limited in our ability to scale events, fundraising, or our outreach targets.

At BIGVISION, we embrace a personalized approach that highlights innovation and individual success outside of the traditional treatment box.  We have achieved strong results by building a community with a new approach to sustaining recovery post-rehab/post-active addiction. 

BIGVISION has the strategy and tactics to break down the stigmatization through highlighting and modeling positive change. The Elevate Prize will help strengthen our impact exponentially - having access to mentorship, networking and community support opportunities will provide more comprehensive marketing, communications and growth strategies. The resources to expand our team to increase the scope of our programming will meet our mission and beat our goals. 

The training, networking, and amplification resources of the Elevate Prize would augment awareness of BIGVISION among the media, potential community members, supporters and policy makers. It will generate a flywheel effect, with advocacy driving a desire to engage, helping us scale our community more rapidly. The broader effect of raising the public narrative will help break down stigmatizations.  

Crucially, we will capture data to develop impact goals and prove the value of what we do; how we keep people healthy, and effectively save lives. We will disseminate this information to drive comprehension of how an active lifestyle within an engaged, supportive community can powerfully aid young adults living in recovery. We will be able to prove this alternative modality is a transformational change agent for the biggest issue affecting our time. 

On a program level, the Elevate Prize will transform the scope and scale of the virtual events relied upon to help sustain recovery by so many, to more national and international levels. We have seen that the more people who are exposed to BIGVISION, the more will engage- we are contagious- this growth will create another flywheel, providing the potential for exponential growth and expansion of reach.

As a lean organization with a paid team of only four, additional resources and growth will allow us to hire a more diverse set of voices and backgrounds. While our scope expands, so too does our reach into more diverse and marginalized communities. This will cultivate more prospects to extend our network and source a more inclusive and equitable team.

At BIGVISION, a primary goal is breaking down the stigmatizations, which are other forms of prejudice.  An initiative of mine was to have BIGVISION devote space and resources to invite our community and the public to hold challenging conversations around the intersection of social justice, equality, and impact on the recovery landscape. Our leadership team was so passionate and aligned with this, that we all ended up devoting personal time and resources. The opioid crisis doesn’t discriminate, neither do we.  I am proud of the movement we have made thus far by developing a diverse advisory board to provide guidance- but we acknowledge that we have a long way to go. The Elevate Prize will allow us to devote more resources to continue these types of initiatives, increase our staff ensuring diversity and equity, and provide more continuing education.

When Eve Goldberg invited me to be the Executive Director, she knew that the next leader of BIGVISION had to be a person in recovery.  It is an unfortunately lonely club - those of us who have grown out of our addictions and into dedicating our lives to helping others.  I have spent the last decade vertically integrated throughout the substance abuse treatment space — from person in recovery, to a seasoned clinician, turned pioneering healthcare executive. My passion is personal and I live every day continuing to learn the lessons that my community needs to move us all forward.  

Simply put: I walked in the shoes of those that I need to help. I still work every day to sustain my sobriety, strengthening my resolve to build the resources for others and improving approaches and interventions.  The BIGVISION team and board are stacked with people who have lived experience - individuals in recovery, family members who have lost loved ones, family members who are struggling to hold on, clinical experts, and beyond.  Together we have created an amazing resource that is constantly evolving to prove best practices and to establish a community of support that can welcome anyone.  

For a decade, I’ve faced challenges working outside the box of abstinence-only, binary, one-size-fits-all treatment. While recovery rates under traditional interventions are dismal, the “rehab-industrial-complex” continues to discourage people like me who focus on the individual as a whole in conjunction with associated family/social ecosystems.  Recognizing this challenge to my own recovery, it has remained my mission to pioneer alternative measures since day one. BIGVISION is embracing this mission on an institutional scale, demonstrating that multiple recovery philosophies can coexist.

I remain steadfast in my approach, and am grateful for this supportive home.  I’ve been told by countless individuals that alternatives to Twelve Step practices validated their individual journey and gave them a simple but meaningful hope.  Just last week, I received a call from a former patient celebrating his eight year recovery anniversary.  After 20 years of “failed’ rehabs, jails and institutions, he credits his sobriety on the alternative path that we built together. 

I set my compass and continue to lead a charge. Impacting and saving lives is my most fulfilling reward. With the untapped populations that have been ostracized from traditional treatment, I know that our potential is immeasurable. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wVW7qLSePQ

Good Day New York 8/31/2018- Provided expert commentary on the opioid crisis and  NJ announcing they will be distributing Narcan to schools

https://grabien.com/file.php?id=483359

HLN Rosanne 10/17/2018- Provided expert commentary and analysis on the TV show Rosanne ending with the title character overdosing on opioids

https://grabien.com/file.php?id=519037

HLN dentists 12/4/2018- Provided expert commentary and evaluation of the potential contribution of dentists prescribing opioids may be contributing to the overdose epidemic

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/opioid-crisis-what-overdoses-in-public-restrooms-mean-for-the-service-industry

Fox- Public Bathroom OD's 9/27/2018- Provided expert commentary on the prevalence of heroin/opioid overdoses in public restrooms

We will focus on three areas: 1) augmenting our voice 2) amplifying our opportunities to engage with our community, and 3) measuring and evaluating our community impact. The funding will help with increasing our staff to bring in marketing expertise, driving community loyalty and establishing a qualitative and quantitative data initiative for maximum social impact. 

Augmenting our voice will help us reach untapped populations and shine a light on alternative recovery solutions to break down stigmatizations. We will be able to showcase the exciting potential and vibrancy of a life in sustainable sobriety. 

Increasing staff will provide a stronger, more diverse foundation to increase our scale and scope of operations This enables us to save more lives and impact social ecosystems. 

The capacity to track and evaluate data through scientific methodology will enable us to improve our efficacy, identify trends, and provide further proof of concept to funding sources and policy makers.

We partner with multiple organizations to synergize in multiple domains. From reaching underserved populations such as New York Therapeutic Communities, Inc. and 

Serendipity (therapeutic community and residential substance abuse treatment and case management services primarily to adults in the criminal justice system) to integrate and diversify our community, to SansBar (an alcohol free bar and event organizer) to host popup events role modeling sober lifestyle. Additionally, we’re developing a ground-breaking Recovery Lifestyle Summit with Caron Treatment Centers (internationally recognized as leaders in the clinical/treatment space). We’re collaborating with the Association of Recovery in Higher Education (ARHE) (national organization providing collegiate recovery services), bringing our impact directly to college campuses. Lastly, there are numerous individual providers who bring their services to our events to provide the experiences that help sustain recovery from fitness, yoga and art to educational and experiential practitioners.