Pubdate: Sat, 05 Aug 2006
Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
Copyright: 2006 St. Paul Pioneer Press
Contact:  http://www.twincities.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/379
Author: Thom Forbes, Public Access Journalism
Note: Thom Forbes is an author, blogger on addiction and recovery and 
former reporter for the New York Daily News.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

PAIN AND SECRECY OF ADDICTION SHAPES 'WOUNDED HEALERS'

Our family's private battle with addiction became very public when 
"Saving Carrick," a "Dateline NBC" documentary about our daughter's 
recovery from heroin dependency, first aired in July 2005.

We participated in that story, even filming embarrassing scenes of 
confrontation and dysfunction ourselves, because my wife Deirdre and 
I wanted to help to break the hush-hush silence that surrounds this disease.

Indeed, addiction to alcohol and other drugs is the "Elephant on Main 
Street" - the name of the Web site and blog we've set up 
(http://elephantonmain.com) to discuss a growing problem in our 
communities that many people pretend they don't see.

Deirdre and I have both been sober since the mid-1980s. In 2002, we 
started talking openly about our own struggle with alcoholism and 
drugs when we were young adults because we felt that some members of 
our community were dismissing their children's experimentation with 
mind-altering substances as a "rite of passage" to be treated with a 
wink - or even a nod.

We are by no means alone in turning our experience into advocacy. 
There is a long history in the recovery movement of what William L. 
White, author of "Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction 
Treatment and Recovery in America," calls "wounded healers" - men and 
women who overcome their afflictions and then feel compelled to help others.

Many of today's prominent support groups, treatment facilities and 
philanthropies have been born from the experience of recovery 
alcoholics and addicts or those affected by them, including 
Alcoholics Anonymous, the National Council of Alcohol and Drug 
Dependence, the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation, the Lowe Family 
Foundation, and the Betty Ford Center.

Within days of the death of his 25-year-old son from a fatal dose of 
alcohol and Ecstasy last year, prominent attorney Robert Shapiro 
launched the Brent Shapiro Foundation for Drug Awareness 
(www.foundationfordrugawareness.com) to raise awareness, support 
research and engender discussion about chemical dependency.

On a grassroots level, thousands of ad hoc groups around the country 
- - many of them also formed after personal heartbreak - are addressing 
the needs not only of addicts, but also of family members, including 
the siblings who often are innocent victims of the disease.

"A vanguard of recovering people and their families are standing 
together to offer themselves as living proof of the existence and 
transformative power of successful long-term recovery," White says. 
"They are educating local communities, reaching out to those still 
suffering, organizing new recovery support services and advocating 
pro-recovery social policies."

Libba Phillips started Outpost for Hope (outpostforhope.org) when her 
younger sister, who suffers from mental illness and crack cocaine and 
alcohol addictions, disappeared in 1999 and her family discovered 
that law enforcement and social services organizations were unwilling 
or unable to help. Based in Citrus Heights, Calif., the group helps 
other families looking for missing loved ones, many of whom, with 
co-occurring addiction and mental disorders, navigate what Philips 
calls "the lost highway."

"It has given me a purpose," she says. "There's a real power in 
numbers, to know that you're not the only person who's going through this."

The Peers Influence Peers Partnership (peerspartnership.org), which 
carries a prevention and recovery message to young adults across the 
country, was founded in 1993 after the cousin of a student in Frank 
Reale's video production club in the Putnam Valley, N.Y., school 
system died in a drunk driving accident. Since then, more than 250 
high school and college students have created and produced a dozen 
hourlong videos and public service announcements broadcast via 
satellite each year to a thousand locations across the country.

"Having it come from kids rather than adults, it's less of a lecture 
and more trying to really help someone," says Peter Ries, 16, a 
junior at Putnam Valley High School.

Pat Nichols, a travel agent in Edmond, Okla., formed Parents Helping 
Parents (www.parentshelpingparents.info) in 2000 to help other 
families avoid the pain he was experiencing watching his son deal 
with addictions to both alcohol and drugs. He has counseled more than 
1,200 families since then, providing "emergency triage" in the form 
of referrals and coaching. He's set up a Web site listing local 
resources, and established two additional chapters in Norman and 
Stillwater, Okla. - and, as of this writing, his son had just 
celebrated 90 days of sobriety.

Two years ago, after Joanne Peterson discovered that her 19-year-old 
son was a heroin addict, she "went through grief, shock and horror 
before realizing that I was isolating myself." Following a panel 
discussion about the opiate epidemic sweeping the area where she 
lives south of Boston - 29 young people died from overdoses in 
Bristol and Plymouth counties alone in 2005 - Peterson told a 
newspaper reporter that she'd like to start a parents group. She 
received nearly 100 e-mails after the story appeared in the Patriot 
Ledger newspaper, in Quincy, Mass. Learn To Cope (www.learn2cope.org) 
now conducts weekly meetings for 280 members, and maintains an active 
Web site and online discussion group. Peterson's son just celebrated 
a year of recovery.

Collectively, these mutual aid groups transcend the comfort and 
support they offer their participants, according to historian White.

"The future of addiction treatment and recovery in America," he says, 
"hinges on the success or failure of this new recovery advocacy movement."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman