An extended review of a 2025 book by Quentin Genuis
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Cascade Books, 2025. 166 pages. $32 (ebook $10)
Imagine a book about addiction written by an ER doctor working in Downtown Eastside Vancouver. A book full of stories based on the author’s lived experiences in a neighbourhood many of us avoid.
Now imagine another book about addiction written by a theologically trained ethicist. Such an author can step back and examine the moral framework people use when we either choose to hope or choose to write people off.
Recovering People is both books. Quentin Genuis (I keep wanting to switch his name to genius – he does have a lot of degrees!) is an emergency physician and ethicist at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. His broad background gives the book a range of perspectives.
What impressed me most is his theological conviction that people are created by God in God’s image. No exceptions. In a book dealing with heavy material, the author always describes people with dignity and recognizes their humanity. He doesn’t dismiss people as addicts. He purposefully refers to “persons with addiction” in order to “use language that points to personhood” (p. 59). He maintains hope that restoration is possible.
Recovering People doesn’t define people by their symptoms or medical conditions. Is a person with addiction trapped in disease? Is taking drugs a choice? Genuis explores the limits of both paradigms, while offering another way less narrowly focused as a bad disease or a poor choice.
The author defines addiction as disordered love. He wonders: Can a person be addicted to running? Coffee? (p. 59). (Those questions felt too close to home!) “Seeking healing from disordered loves in not just a project for some people, it is a project for all of us” (p. 59).
Thus, people with addiction belong in the church, as we all do. Genuis has a high view of the Church which he describes a place offering hospitality, friendship and hope. He emphasizes that he sees people at the ER because they have nowhere else to go (p. 91).
He counsels “practical, costly hospitality” where Christians share their homes and common places (p.94). For example, Jacob’s Well in Vancouver offers “daily opportunities to partake in shared activities that open up space for the re-ordering of one’s life.… I go there once a week with my children for board games night” (p. 90).
The author describes a case study he shared, not with fellow medical practitioners, but with a group of seminary students (p. 85-86):
Parents of a 17-year-old son want to meet with the minister. Their son is using drugs, attending school sporadically, disappearing for days at a time and stealing from their home. An addictions physician offered replacement medicines which have not resulted in any significant change. Would twelve-step programs be helpful? What should the parents do?
Genuis notes that “If pastors are not encountering these scenarios, it is not because they are not happening” (p. 86). Agreed. This is precisely why Christians need to read this book and talk about it.
The seminary students saw the situation through the lens of a disease model. Genuis argues that addiction is not just a medical problem, nor just a spiritual problem. The church, doctors and helpful secular options like twelve step programs all have a role to play.
Genuis proposes two guiding questions for interventions that “purport to seek the good for person with addictions: (1) Does the intervention recognize that addiction is opposed to the good and (2) Does the intervention have a high enough hope for persons?” (p. 127).
While the entire book carries insight, my sticky notes are clustered at the end in the chapters on recovery and hope.
His wisdom on safe injection sites and harm reduction programs made me think more deeply. When society offers harm reduction instead of meaningful treatment (p. 133-134), we are aiming too low. He sees harm reduction programs as “narrow components of a whole-person care model” with a long-term goal of “freedom and thriving for affected persons” (p. 134).
My writing group includes Dr. Kevin Dautrement, a family physician in Moose Jaw, Sask., and the medical director of the Wakamow Valley Detox Center in Moose Jaw. Commenting on the previous paragraph on “aiming too low” he writes, “I could not agree more. I’ve been involved in addiction medicine for about 35 years, and have been frustrated by the push toward safe injection sites etc. This cheap band-aid solution does little to treat the underlying issues. Longer detox and rehab especially the yearlong programs like Teen Challenge and Village of Hope offer true success and life change.”
Recommended reading for Christians wrestling with how to love our neighbours, all our neighbours.
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