Humanly Possible: Episode 01

Fr. Bill Wigmore has served in the addiction treatment field for over 50 years serving as counselor, clinical director and administrator at several nationally recognized treatment centers in the southwest.

A New York City native, he received his undergraduate degree in history from the University of Dayton and did post-graduate work at Columbia University. He served in the Peace Corps, ran a group home for orphaned children in the Bronx, studied and worked on a kibbutz in Northern Israel, and was active in the Catholic Worker Movement in Wisconsin. Bill began his addiction work when he was a member of the Jesuit Order in Detroit studying for the priesthood. It was then that he identified his own alcoholism and has had uninterrupted sobriety since 1972.

In 2008 Bill received the Wheelock Whitney Award given to “the man or woman who has advanced the understanding of faith and science in addiction prevention and recovery.” The award is given annually by the Johnson Institute of Washington D.C. His present efforts focus on the study, practice, and efficacy of Two Way Prayer. He has published two studies on the practice and maintains a website and podcasts that help to promote it among those in 12-Step recovery.

Charles Thibodeaux, LCDC, BAAS, is a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) since 1992 and has worked in the substance abuse field for over 30 years. During that time, he worked in residential treatment settings for adults as well as adolescents. He worked at a community based MHMR where he supervised an HIV prevention street outreach program for 12 years which followed a harm reduction philosophy whose target population was active IV drug users and sex industry workers. He worked for the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) in HIV and Substance Use Disorder field for 10 years.

He is one of the pioneers who helped get the first underground syringe service program started in Texas. He has also presented on harm reduction topics including overdose awareness and prevention for several years at the DSHS State sponsored Conferences. As co-founder of Texas Overdose Naloxone Initiative (TONI) since 2014, he has conducted trainings on Opioid Overdose Prevention throughout the state of Texas. He has worked as a Patient Navigator/Consultant with Linkage to Care for Hepatitis C getting individuals tested, treated, and cured.

He is also co-founder of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance (THRA) which helps locate individuals with opioid use disorder and connecting them to harm reduction services including Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT).

Kerby Stewart is certified by Spiritual Directors International. In his work at Personal Responsibility Recovery, he meets with clients and serves as a catalyst for the personal transformation recovery requires.

He is often heard saying recovery is not only possible, it is predictable when the individual learns to regain reward from everyday satisfactions bringing joy back into one's life.These pursuits can be accomplished by working the 12 steps so commonly undertaken by many seeking recovery and together they amount to no less than a spiritual transformation. Their accomplishment is not a function of skill nor even "Hard work" and dedication. Rather, they are natural outcomes of turning one's life over.

Dr. Holleran Steiker served as the Steve Hicks Professor of Addiction, Recovery and Substance Abuse Services and Associate Director of Education and Training at the Addiction Research Institute. She had been a pillar at the Steve Hicks School since 2000 and served in faculty appointments at the UT Dell Medical School Department of Psychiatry, as well as the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Family and Community Medicine. She also held an administrative position in the School of Undergraduate Studies as Director of Instruction, Engagement and Wellness, and was a beloved teacher in the classroom.

She won dozens of teaching awards, including the Tower Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award, the UT System’s Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, the Texas Exes Teachers Excellence Award, and the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor Award for Excellence, among others. Her induction into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in occurred in 2012, and throughout her career, the Council on Social Work Education and Society for Social Work & Research recognized Lori’s accomplishments and contributions.

She was particularly committed to the BSW students and their successful growth as professionals. Each semester, 150 first-year students enrolled in her Undergraduate Signature Course, “Young People and Drugs.” She also taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of groups, families, and substance misuse. She also served as the Assistant Dean for Undergraduates in the School of Social Work from 2009 to 2012 and she continually served in an advisory role for the UT Center for Students in Recovery.

She conducted research funded by federal and state agencies as well as foundations and was known especially for her expertise in community-based adolescent and emerging adult substance use recovery. She facilitated the adaptation and evaluation of the keepin’ it REAL (kiR) project for youth in a variety of community settings including LGBTQ youth at OutYouth, low-income housing youth at YMCA, alternative school settings, LifeWorks Homeless Youth Shelter, SCAN advocacy program for border youth in Laredo, TX, and Gardner Betts with incarcerated youth and youth on probation.

She also spearheaded overdose prevention and response initiatives on the University of Texas campus, helped start OperationNaloxone.org, and served a Co-PI on the Texas Targeted Opioid Response (TTOR) to study the opioid crisis in Texas and prevent drug overdoses. She was the founder and a board member of University High School (Central Texas’s first recovery high school) and has served as the faculty liaison for the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Students in Recovery since its inception in 2004. At the time of her death, she was a member Texas Opioid Abatement Council, tasked with distributing resources to ameliorate the effects of the opioid crisis.

She published more than one hundred peer-reviewed publications and three books, including Youth and Substance Use: Prevention, Intervention and Recovery (2016)., Substance Abusing Latinos: Current Research on Epidemiology, Prevention and Treatment, and Signature Course Stories: Transforming Undergraduate Education.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in central New Jersey, Dr. Holleran Steiker graduated as a proud valedictorian from Hightstown High School in 1983. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Honors English from Duke University and her MSW from The University of Pennsylvania. She trained by Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic in Family Therapy and worked as a clinical psychiatric social worker and addictions therapist with adolescents and adults for a dozen years before receiving her Ph.D. from Arizona State University.

Lori passed away on September 22, 2024, after living with metastatic cancer for several years.