People who use drugs are organized. You just might not see it.

In August, Brad Pitt told Esquire that he is no longer sober, but is more in control of his drinking than he was in the past. This quote occupied just a few lines, but spurred a flurry of follow-up pieces that still has not stopped. Outlets from Fox to the New York Times to The Times of India have fueled heated debates over whether Pitt can accurately assess his own drinking habits. 

I use this example not to jump into the debate myself, but to point out that harm reduction talking points rarely get this kind of widespread attention unless they’re coming from a celebrity’s mouth. Pitt has faced a lot of skepticism and outrage, but so did Demi Lovato when they first described themself as “California Sober,” a concept that offends far fewer people today, though Lovato has now abandoned it. Harm reductionists had been encouraging people to use weed to cut down on other substances for many years before Lovato mainstreamed the idea, which is an offshoot of recovery without abstinence—also long familiar within harm reduction circles. 

At this particular moment, influential people from across the political spectrum are advocating for policies that deny agency to people who use drugs, with the implied justification that they cannot be trusted to make their own decisions. This move away from harm reduction and towards paternal criminalization is directly related to a myth I’ve encountered a lot recently—that people who use drugs are inherently ineffective organizers and advocates. But the proof of their effectiveness lives in the persistence of their ideas, even if their names and faces are forgotten.

Sunny, who is based somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, embraced alternative recovery many years before it made headlines. She tried 12-step.  “I really can't completely bash [12-step],” she said, “It has its flaws, but I really did receive benefit from it, in the beginning,”  After a certain point, though, she realized the meetings weren’t really helping her anymore—she was attending to avoid judgment. She left the program, and started to wonder what it might look like to “reintroduce some substances,” while remaining committed to recovery. Sunny stood in her kitchen as she recounted how her online research led her to the concept of harm reduction for the first time. She had just dropped off her toddler, the remnants of her morning smoothie in a blender behind her. I’ve rarely met a harm reductionist who wasn’t impressively committed to getting enough fiber.

In 2022, The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism changed its definition of recovery, to officially include people who still drank, but in a way that's no longer destructive to their lives. NIAAA cited research on both formal and informal recovery communities illustrating that many people can, in fact, improve their circumstances dramatically by setting better boundaries around drinking rather than quitting altogether. Before there was data to prove this point, harm reductionists were figuring out how to help one another use substances in a way that is safer and less disruptive. When formal research validated their informal recovery communities, it led to an institutional definition change, which, four years later, finally got some press because Brad Pitt, knowingly or not, had applied a harm reduction philosophy to his own drinking.