Although there are some who say the recession is lifting, the aftermath we're left with isn't very pretty: record high unemployment, escalating taxes, increasing homelessness, rising rents, huge numbers of individuals and families without access to health care coverage. By anyone's definition, these are hard times.

"Many people seem to be cracking under the recession pressure," writes Cindy Perman, a writer at CNBC.com, covering the stock market, retail sector and other business news. "One in three moms surveyed by MomLogic.com and the Insight Research Group this spring said they have turned to a vice such as overeating, drinking, drugs and/or gambling to cope with the stress. Two- thirds said they feel intensely negative emotions, resulting in arguing, fits of crying and frustration as they worry about the state of the world, and how to pay the bills."

"People have been scared," says Alan Ross, Director of the Samaritans of New York, the city's only 24-hour suicide prevention hotline, a service whose calls have shot up 28% in the past two years. "From 9/11 on, they've had disaster, invasion, threats. If you read what goes on in the world, it's not too hard to be scared."

It's rarely just one thing that sets people off, Ross recently told the New York Times. "It's: ÔI'm having trouble at home. I'm having trouble at work. My relationship isn't going well. I'm really afraid of the future. Am I going to be alone, and can't pay the rent? Am I going to have a job?' It's a package of things… The economy certainly plays into a lot of those things. But I think this state of mind and emotional fear has been getting worse for quite a while. The economy is just an additional factor." UNHEALTHY COPING BEHAVIOR

For some people, worry or anxiety or resorting to excessive spending, eating, drinking or drugging might feel like effective ways to cope. But the long-term and even short- term consequences of such behavior can be "devastating to your emotional and mental well-being," says the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

"Symptoms of depression exist on a con- tinuum," notes SAMHSA in the pamphlet, "Managing Depressive Symptoms in Sub- stance Abuse Clients During Early Recovery." "At one end of the spectrum is the experience of sadness and other depressive symptoms occurring at appropriate times and for short periods, during which the individual successfully uses coping strategies. At the other end is clinical depression. The line between depressive symptoms and psychiatric depressive disorders is a question of degree."

According to the Samaritans, most people along that continuum can be helped through the crisis points they face if they have someone who will spend time with them, listen, take them seriously and help them talk about their thoughts and feelings. Says the Samaritans' website, "Almost every suicidal crisis has at its center a strong ambivalence: ÔI can't handle the pain anymore,' but not necessarily, ÔI want to be dead forever!'"

Unfortunately, many struggling Americans, whether homeless, unemployed, or beleaguered with thoughts of suicide, find themselves with nowhere to turn. While people are talking about bank bailouts and the country's financial rescue, notes Ross, "no one's talking about the emotional rescue of the country."

CRISIS AS OPPORTUNITY

With stress bearing down from all sides, there are no easy answers. But, there are those who see hard times not so much as an impediment, but as an opportunity.

Rev. Forrest Church, theologian, author and Minister of Public Theology at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, is one of those. He delivered a sermon in the spring of 2009 entitled, "How to make the most out of hard times." In his sermon, Rev. Church noted that it is not so much what happens to a person that determines the trajectory of his or her life, but rather how that person responds to what happens.

"One thing a crisis almost always does is force us to change," Church observes. "We will either change for the better or for the worse. Facing new limitations on your lifestyle, one will pine away in a house of ruin; the woman sitting right next to you may be rocked by the same circumstances to change her priorities and find meaning that before was hidden behind all the gloss and glitter. One will drown her sorrows in drink, another choose this moment to stop drinking and look back on it as the most significant, life-changing moment of his life.

"The same glass of cold water will leave some feeling insulted and victimized; others it will awaken and ultimately refresh." According to Rev. Church, "To keep fear from establishing permanent residency in the habitation of your heart, three practical ideals commend themselves… They are to: want what you have; do what you can; and be who you are.

"These three stratagems can help us reclaim our lives from fear's dominion."

Emotional reclamation is, by and large, an individual endeavor. Whether it be reclamation from the tyranny of fear or from any of the serious difficulties that beset humankind in good times and bad, "Recovery is a process, different for each person," says H. Westley Clark of SAMHSA. "At its core, the philosophy of recovery embraces and encourages an individual's capacity for change and personal transformation."

REPAIRING THE WORLD

The tumultuous times we live in will inevitably leave their mark on all of us, and hope in hard times is never an easy task. Nevertheless, the possibility of a brighter tomorrow is just there around the corner, a light at the end of the tunnel. Sharon Astyk, a writer, teacher and subsistence farmer based in upstate New York, covers issues ranging from agriculture to energy policy, from food preservation and cooking to religious life and democracy. "The way out of this current crisis," she writes, "is through it; to go forward from where we are, with what we have and who we are. It isn't required of any of us that we not be afraid, or that we don't spend a lot of time grumpily wishing that someone else would do the work."

But it is required, Astyk continues, "that while we curse fate, previous generations, the current administration, God and the Federal Reserve, we get to work. What work? Tikkun olam, a Hebrew phrase that means 'repairing the world.' In my faith, that is why we are here Ñ to fix what is broken, repair what is damaged, to improve what can be improved. As the saying goes, it is not required of us that we complete the work, but it is not permitted for us not to try."

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Guiding Principles of Recovery

Proposed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

Recovery…

• is self-directed and empowering.
• involves a personal recognition of the need for change and transformation.
• is holistic.
• has cultural dimensions.
• exists on a continuum of improved health and wellness.
• is supported by peers and allies.
• emerges from hope and gratitude.
• involves a process of healing and self-redefinition.
• involves addressing discrimination and transcending shame and stigma.
• involves (re)joining and (re)building a life in the community.
• is a reality. It can, will, and does happen.

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Ames K. Sweet writes on issues related to addiction for many organizations including AA, the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, and the Hazelden Foundation.

Barbara Nicholson-Brown is publisher of the recovery newspaper Together AZ and founder of the Art of Recovery Expo.