“When we start attending to our wounds, our need to self-medicate the pain lessens, and the healing can finally begin.”

On this episode, we talk with Dr. Felecia Pullen, the founder, President, and CEO of Pillars and Let’s Talk SAFETY, Inc. In her life and work, Felecia encourages a view of substance use that acknowledges its complex realities, with overlapping lenses of race, class, culture, and systemic injustice. This conversation highlights the challenges people of color face in treatment and brings to light the very real and painful impact of systemic racism and generational trauma. Race continues to be a blind spot in the treatment community, but acknowledging these issues is essential for effectively treating communities of color.

• [1:37] Despite the challenges of systemic racism, a community like Harlem is worth much more than a drug epidemic.
• [4:35] As substance abuse flooded the streets of Harlem, Felecia learned to navigate her city with love and understanding.
• [7:25] With substances interwoven into her everyday life, Felecia struggled to remember her own ‘firsts’ with using drugs.
• [9:05] The intersectionality of being a successful career woman of color navigating the corporate environment.
• [11:25] To cope with her inner conflict, Felecia turned to substances and increasingly struggled to keep her two worlds in balance.
• [14:00] “You don’t smile anymore.” The game-changing point when Felecia realized that she wasn’t hiding her drug usage from anyone.
• [15:20] Felecia’s dangerous and self-destructive behaviors, in her mind, were the solution to a major trauma problem.
• [17:55] The wrestle between seeking treatment and remaining dependent on substances.
• [19:30] The absence of recovery options in Harlem made leaving her home essential to Felecia’s successful recovery journey.
• [21:08] Traditional practices that are rebranded as alternative practices divorce a community from their own modes of healing.
• [23:45] In black and brown communities, the heroin crisis was treated as a crime. In white communities, it was treated as an epidemic worthy of funding.
• [25:50] After treatment, Felecia was eager to address race blindspots in Harlem and to expand her education in order to support her new calling.
• [27:10] The ITC program encourages self-compassion, which Felecia admits she still struggles with. She shares what is allowing her to practice self-kindness.
• [29:45] Trauma is exhausting, layered and shapeshifting, as Felecia recognizes in her own community.
• [31:15] Bringing positive, non-prescriptiving treatment options into Harlem.
• [32:00] Felecia’s continued efforts to quiet the voices in her head and support her own on-going healing.
• [33:34] The love and wisdom that Felecia has gained in her own journey.

Additional Resources:

• Dr. Pullen
• CMC: Foundation For Change
• SpiritWorks Foundation
• Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey;

Tweetables:

• “That trauma that I grew up in as a child, all of that impacted my behavior and my need for time and the voices and the noises to stop.” — Felecia
• “I don’t remember there ever being a time that substances weren’t in my life.” — Felecia
• “My ability, desire and willingness to come back to the community that raised me is the definition of success that I’m going to hang my hat on.” — Felecia
• “I wanted to be a great mom, and I didn’t understand the impact of my drug use… How do you reconcile this duality and… pick all of those little pieces apart and put them together into a picture that you can actually look in the mirror and say, ‘Ok, I like her’.?” — Felecia
• “I need us to empower one another to understand how we come to the table with strengths and knowledge and fortitude that is often robbed of us as a people and given over to others.” — Felecia
• “The self-compassion comes forth in accepting my shortcomings and going, okay, what's the learning moment from this? And I can show it to other people. That doesn't mean that I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not worthy enough. It just means that I'm human.” — Felecia
• “When I changed the voices that were around me, I changed the way that I thought about me.” — Felecia
• “There are all of these ways that recovery can be measured without the definition of abstinence.” — Felecia
• “I need people to open their lens so that they can see the possibilities of recovery for the people that are in their circle, in their community, in their family, in themselves.” — Felecia