Where Are They Now?

Granfield and Cloud recently contributed a chapter on recovery capital’s theoretical foundation to the “Handbook of Recovery Capital: Understanding the Science and Practice” (Bristol University Press, 2025). Edited by David Best and Emily Hennessy, the book summarizes the key evidence on recovery capital measurement and its application. Written for researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and people in recovery, the book demonstrates the impact of recovery capital in improving the quality of services available to people at different stages of recovery.

In the book foreword, William White writes, “Since the publication of [Granfield and Cloud’s] original 1994 paper, the term ‘recovery capital’ has appeared in the titles of more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific and medical articles and exerted a profound influence at policy, service practice, and personal recovery levels … The introduction of recovery capital into the field’s discourse was part of the larger shift toward a recovery paradigm. This shift extended the field’s vision and focus toward the successful, long-term resolution of [alcohol and other drug use] problems at personal, family, community, and cultural levels.”

White continues, “Traditionally, addiction recovery has been viewed as a process of subtraction — deleting [alcohol and other drug] use and its progeny of allied problems — with success measured by disordered individuals achieving a state of remission solely based on the cessation of drug use … In contrast, recovery capital proponents place great emphasis on recovery as processes of addition and multiplication — the acquisition of new assets, the achievement of global health and functioning and the potential to thrive and flourish, to get ‘better than well.’”

Recovery capital is, at its core, a justice-rooted paradigm that shifts a deficit-oriented viewpoint to a strengths-based perspective and repositions clients as experts in their own lived experience.

Life after Retirement

Since his retirement in 2020, Cloud has battled chronic health issues that have curtailed the athletic pursuits he enjoyed and delayed saxophone lessons and a series of long-anticipated road trips. He did make it to Chattanooga for his 60th high school reunion, and he gets together with GSSW Professor Emeritus Jim Moran to watch every Denver Broncos game; they are sometimes joined by fellow Professors Emeriti Walter LaMendola and Jeff Jenson. Although Cloud does not read many books, saying he had enough of that during his long career in academia, he is a prolific magazine reader and has come to enjoy solving sudoku puzzles. Cloud has also made time in his schedule to become an inaugural member of the GSSW Dean’s Circle, where he and his fellow members advise the dean about the landscape for social work that must be centered as she leads the school.

As someone who experienced the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras — “as someone who drank from the Colored water fountains” — Cloud is also an astute follower of current events.

At GSSW, Cloud’s humor and optimism were a magnet. He was someone faculty and students alike would seek out for advice. Today, however, Cloud says his optimism is being tested. The current political environment “makes you question the things we grew up with: Treat people decently. Be honest. You see someone in need of help, try to help them. Be a decent person and things will work out — good will prevail. That’s what we’ve been taught. But righteousness may not prevail.”

Or, Cloud says, it may take stirring up some good trouble to prevail, as it did at other key points in the nation’s past. He says, “We’re in a crucible, at the cliff. We can hang on or fall over. We don’t want to fall over, but it’s gonna depend on work. What kind of shenanigans can we inject into this to turn it into our direction? I am hopeful and try to do my part.”

Although he is retired, Cloud says his social change work is ongoing. “The only thing we can do is continue to be active, make sure voting rights stay in place, do whatever we have to do to make sure our voices are heard.”