“Turning Pain Into Purpose”: AG Andrea Campbell Urges Vulnerability at BMC’s Addiction Conference

The Grand Ballroom at the DCU Center is packed with close to 900 people—murmuring and buzzing excitement for the keynote speaker, Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Andrea Joy Campbell. Campbell takes the stage after an introduction from Executive Director of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center Miriam Komaromy, MD, who refers to Campbell as one of her personal heroes. It’s day two of Together for Hope 2025, BMC’s statewide conference convening experts in substance use disorder (SUD).

The room explodes with applause, and Campbell, speaking to the room of people who have pushed for progress in addiction treatment and prevention, centers her keynote on the idea of turning pain into purpose. It’s a theme that resonates with the audience—physicians, nurses, community orgs, harm reduction specialists, policymakers, advocacy groups, recovery coaches, and more—based on the many times the attorney general must pause speaking for the applause and the vocal affirmations.

More than one-third of people working as substance use counselors are in recovery themselves. And the Grayken Center intentionally made space at the conference for people with lived experience of SUD and families who have been affected. It’s something that Campbell specifically drew attention to.

“I have the utmost respect for folks who choose through intentional choice to wake up every single day, to take whatever suffering they’ve gone through, whatever they have been through, whatever they have experienced,” Campbell says, “to dust off any sense of shame and take that experience—which I think is power—into their respective workplaces, into community, to make a difference, especially on these issues and especially to address the opioid crisis.”

Sharing your story to spark purpose and progress

Campbell turns her attention from the audience back inward to herself. She notes that she’s not often one to share her bio, but that lately she’s been sharing more and more about her life, what drives her, and what informs the work she does.

“I was born and raised in the city of Boston, but what most folks don’t often see or read about is that I had significant instability growing up,” she shares.

Campbell opens up about losing her mother in a car accident when she was 8 months old—her mother was driving to visit her father who was incarcerated at the time. She and her brothers bounced around homes, from her grandmother who lived with alcoholism, to the foster care system, to other relatives and back. Her father was released when she was 8 years old and died when she was 19, a sophomore at Princeton. Her twin brother, Andre, died while in the custody of the Department of Correction, because of what she says was inadequate healthcare while he was waiting to go to trial.

“I know there is power not only in the story, but there is power in encouraging other people to come forward, to share their own story and, most importantly, to take all of that as fuel to do the necessary work that we all do every single day.”

andrea joy campbell, attorney general of the commonwealth of massachusetts

“I think that story connects to so many stories of people probably in this very room, but I share it unapologetically with no shame attached whatsoever and with real vulnerability,” Campbell says, “because I know there is power not only in the story, but there is power in encouraging other people to come forward, to share their own story and, most importantly, to take all of that as fuel to do the necessary work that we all do every single day.”

Day two of Together for Hope 2025 is intentionally designed to do just that, to allow people to tell their own stories unapologetically and without shame.

“Recover out loud”: The power of vulnerability

While there are many panels and talks during day two that allow for this type of storytelling and vulnerability, none is more evident than Elizabeth Addison’s performance of her musical “This Is Treatment.”

In the Grand Ballroom, Addison—a composer, creative consultant, and person in in long-term recovery—spoke about her personal journey to writing a musical based on her experience in residential treatment for SUD. Then, actors and singers Annaliese Fagan and Aginah Monique performed three songs from “This Is Treatment” and her other musical “Chasing Grace.”

The performance stirred the packed audience to silence and led to multiple standing ovations. At the end of the show, Addison shared a video retrospective of the process to stage “This Is Treatment.”

“I remember years ago when I decided to recover out loud in hopes that it might help somebody else in their own recovery journey, that I would be vulnerable. And vulnerability was one of my strengths,” Addison says in the video. “And I was going to lean in and talk about the challenges, talk about challenges as a Black woman in recovery, who is still figuring out who she is, what she wants, how to live in this world, how to go after a life that she thought wasn’t possible for her, but always dreamed of. And how to create that space for everybody else.”

It’s a sentiment that ties back to Campbell’s call to action in her keynote address.

“And I think in this moment in time, more so than ever before, it is absolutely important that we encourage folks to share their story, to remember their whys, and most importantly, to connect to the humanity of folks as we do this work collectively,” Campbell says.

Both Campbell and Addison’s musical excerpts called upon spaces and communities to be worthy of people being vulnerable and sharing their stories to help themselves and others. Campbell implored the audience to ensure that efforts to assist those with SUD not be “surface-level,” and to use creativity and innovation in the work to treat and prevent SUD. And that all comes back to people who work to turn pain into purpose.

It’s a sentiment that Addison is living with her work. During her final standing ovation of the performance, Addison gestures to the audience:

“Thank you,” she says through tears. “Now let’s do that for everybody else. You know what I mean? Let’s make the tent of recovery as big as we possibly can for everybody else.”