Recovering People
Addiction, Personhood, and the Life of the Church
- Counseling, Grief & Mental Health
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
Working as an emergency physician at the epicenter of the opioid crisis, Dr. Quentin Genuis witnesses the devastating suffering caused by addiction and the incredible resilience of the affected persons. Drawing from real stories and grounded in rich theological insight, he argues that addiction is neither simple choice nor disease but something more nuanced and complex. Rather than moralizing or offering quick fixes, Dr. Genuis issues a timely call for radical hospitality, deep friendship, and abiding hope. This book shows how a humanizing view of addiction illuminates clear and practical ways that families, frontline workers, and faith communities can work to promote recovery. In a world too often numbed by grim headlines, he reminds us that every life is charged with dignity and deserves the chance for restoration.
Endorsements (8)
“It is rare to find a person who is both a skilled emergency physician and also a theologically trained ethicist. Here Quentin reflects on one of the most difficult challenges facing persons and communities in cities, that of addiction. But this is not dry ethics. It pulsates with the experiences of real people and with gospel hope and hospitality. His discerning, person-centered approach makes me hope that this is only the beginning of many books he will write on pressing ethical issues of our time.”
“In an age when Christianity is increasingly allied with cruelty to the marginalized, Genuis’s brilliant, hopeful book shows the church how to be the good news of Jesus for addicted persons.”
“An insightful, warm-hearted, moving, but also appropriately demanding set of reflections on addiction—a comprehensive study of what addiction is, and what we can and should do about it. I warmly recommend this book, not least as a model of how to help people think in a distinctively Christian way about human personhood and its inevitable social and political entailments.”
“If you find it difficult to locate trustworthy perspectives on addiction because it has become such an extensive, complex, devastating, and politicized phenomenon, Recovering People is a compass-like book that can help you get your bearings straight and chart a course in such tumultuous terrain. Not only is it written from the perspective of a medical professional who knows what he is writing about because he has the training and the experiences to speak from an informed perspective, everything shared in this book is framed theologically and composed with resonant levels of empathy and wisdom. In other words, I believe a lot of perspectives, and lives, can be changed by books like these.”
“Addiction is one of the defining crises of our time. In Recovering People, Dr. Quentin Genuis calls the church to view those struggling with addiction not as problems to solve, but as neighbors to love. Writing with a rare blend of medical insight, theological depth, and lived compassion, Genuis urges us to bring Christ’s healing presence to the wounded in our midst.”
“This is a beautiful and important book that grapples honestly with the strange and frightening problem of addiction. Genuis teaches us how to love our neighbor with addiction by teaching us to understand them. With tender and moving accounts of his patients’ struggles with addiction, he exhorts the church to be the church, to be that ‘immersive community’ that embraces the prodigal, directs them to order themselves in Christ, and brings them ‘purpose, new habits, and friendship.’”
“Quentin’s words wrought in the crucible of experience are a tremendous gift to the church. In his personal model approach, he provides practical handholds for us to welcome, befriend, and love those in addiction. Quentin helps us transition from seeing people in our communities as problems to solve and instead he reminds us that our friends in addiction are peers created in the image and likeness of God.”
“Quentin Genuis’s book Recovering People is the one book I would most want to put into the hands of Christians seeking to respond faithfully to addictions in their own lives and the lives of those they love. Genuis admirably combines careful scholarship on addiction with a physician’s wisdom and bedside manner. This is a book full of empathy, insight, and hope.”
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