Victor Garcia, director of MARTI-CHB, along with his
colleagues at the Prevention Research Center (Oakland, California), published “The Anexo
in Northern California: An Alcoholics Anonymous-Based Recovery Residence in
Latino Communities”. The article was featured in the in the Journal of Groups in Addiction &
Recovery.
The article describes the anexos, community-based recovery
residencies in Latino communities, and compares them with mainstream recovery
residences in the country. Latino immigrants fund and operate the anexos on
their own, and offer a low-cost retreatment for substance use disorders around
an Alcoholics Anonymous model with origins in Mexico.
How the anexos contribute
to sobriety and recovery among immigrants and second-generation Latinos is
described. Anexos provide a safe place for men to live, and with the support of
others, work through their substance use disorders. The men learn to rebuild their lives and
reconnect with their families and communities. The findings of the article are
based on a two-year, NIH-funded ethnographic study conducted in the Bay Area,
California.