Learn2Cope

I was just thinking on my lunch break about what makes LTC different. The difference being what worked for me. I have tried other programs.

Different from the other programs for families is the acknowledgment that as a parent, there is a multi-faceted affect on us when we are dealing with an addicted child. To learn only what we can do as far as detachment and enabling empowers us and helps us learn what we are doing that is contributing to the continued progression of active addiction-but as parents with sick children of any sort, we are compelled by nature to educate ourselves about what ails our children. We are compelled by nature to learn about cures and/or treatments for our sick children. We are compelled to care about other people’s children falling victim to such devastation.

We by nature, are not able to leave a sick child flailing without learning about where, how and if they can be treated. We may not be able to make them better, but we are compelled to learn how they might get better.

For me, recovery was still out of my grasp until I was treated as a whole parent.

We are persons - but we are parent persons and by nature, that makes us more complex than just one.

LTC acknowledges and addresses the whole parent.

This for me, was the MAJOR difference - the difference - that made the difference!

Meeting Schedule:

 Every Monday evening 7 PM  

•        Brockton at 10 Christy Drive (BAMSI Building, 2nd floor)

 Every Thursday evening 7 PM    

•      Salem at North Shore Childrens Hospital, 57 Highland Ave. (ground flr Lynch Conference Room)

 If a meeting falls on a major holiday you may want to email us to make sure the meeting is going on. We meet most holidays. To check on meeting status or for questions email learntocope2001@yahoo.com

1. Intervention 911 offers a wide range of services in addition to alcohol intervention and drug interventions. We have done interventions for shopping, eating disorders and even mental health issues.  We also provide services post treatment to help addicts maintain sobriety upon completion of treatment.

   Watching a family member, friend or co-worker self destruct is extremely painful especially when they do not seem to understand the severity of their disease. Often they think they can handle the problem and aren’t aware of their impact on others.  Our goal is to work with loved ones to help them see how by changing their own behavior, they can bring about a change in the addict’s behavior.  We give you tools and help you implement action to bring about an addict’s rock bottom and help them make the choice to seek treatment.

   Intervention 911

   www.intervention911.com

   1-866-888-4911

Hosted by REVERE CARES and REVERE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 20th 7:00 - 8:00PM

held at the Revere Beach Bandstand

If you have lost a loved one to addiction this will be a very healing night. Get there by 6:30 to add your loved one or friends memorial and recieve a candle to light and honor their life.

For more information contact Chris at 781-346-2587

Meeting Schedule:

 Every Monday evening 7 PM  

•        Brockton at 10 Christy Drive (BAMSI Building, 2nd floor)

 Every Thursday evening 7 PM    

•      Salem at North Shore Childrens Hospital, 57 Highland Ave. (ground flr Lynch Conference Room)

 If a meeting falls on a major holiday you may want to email us to make sure the meeting is going on. We meet most holidays. To check on meeting status or for questions email learntocope2001@yahoo.com

“Public Safety and Public Health in the midst of an Epidemic” We need to save MASAC!

You hear many different opinions on this subject but this morning I feel I need to offer mine and also fill the public in on information that is crucially important and from where I stand and what I see as the founder of Learn to Cope. Frankly folks it affects every one of us in the state of Massachusetts in one way or another. Let me separate the Myths from the Facts.

My name is Joanne Peterson. I am the founder of Learn to Cope a support network for families whose loved ones have suffered at the hands of addiction, mainly to OxyContin and Heroin, yes Heroin! We are not a state funded group, we fund ourselves through private donations mainly from families so your tax dollars DO NOT support us, that is one MYTH I want to remove. You may know me as a neighbor or a friend or you may have read about Learn to Cope in various articles over the last eight years or by the misfortune and heartache you may have attended one of the Learn to Cope support chapters in Brockton or Salem or had the need to call our crisis phone.

No matter your opinion of Learn to Cope, or what I have faced in my own situation or anyone else that has lived or is living with addiction in their home it’s crucial for you now as a citizen of this state and a taxpayer to stand up and speak out about a very dangerous situation which is about to affect YOU TOO.

MASAC (Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center) in Bridgewater is projected to close in October of 2009. The fact is MASAC is housed across the street from the Bridgewater State Prison so the men young and old who are sent there by a civil commitment otherwise known as Section 35. These individuals are not housed with rapists and the criminally insane or in the general population of the jail as others would have you believe. MASAC is a locked down Detox Facility and it has saved countless lives and offered people a chance at getting their lives back with great counselors, AA meetings and offers the motivation to go on to further treatment after they have been away from the drug for thirty days. The facility offers families the HOPE and support they so desperately need during an extremely difficult time in their lives. A time when they hit brick wall after brick wall with Insurance companies refusing to pay for detoxification beds. MASAC offers hope when loved ones realize they are powerless to cure their loved ones addiction and have exhausted all other options to get help for their child or relative and they know the potential result of the addiction especially to Opiates is death.

When families grapple with watching their young sons or brothers or husbands or Fathers suffer and come close to death due to an addiction they can not stop on their own their last ditch effort to try to loar them back to “themselves” is MASAC. Those addicted to Opiates are already wearing handcuffs only we can’t see them. The Opiate user is a prisoner to the addiction. OxyContin enters in to peoples lives with out warning. Many young kids in school or fresh out tried OxyContin and had no idea what this drug was and the life threatening potential it has. The addicted child’s parents never had the chance to warn their child about the addictive potential. OxyContins expensive street value quickly leads our youth to the next step in this process, Heroin addiction!

You may or may not know but the Opiate addiction is truly in epidemic proportions and has been for years. This is not new news and it’s happening across the east coast and around the country with prescription drugs being the “new” experiment for teens as young as 13. Senator Steve Tolman says that between 2002 and 2007 we have lost 74 soldiers to the Iraq war from our state, in that same time period we have lost 3,265 people to fatal Opiate overdose. In Massachusetts the Department of Public Health says Opiate overdose is the number one cause of death claiming we lose an average of two people per day. Your once every day all American boy or girl coming from good families who loved them has the potential to access OxyContin at almost any beer party. How can a center such as MASAC be closing in the midst of an Epidemic?

Whether you believe this is a disease or not it isn’t going away. Addiction to prescription drugs and Heroin are at an all time high in our region and across the state. Just some of the reasons it is going to affect you are that there will be more robberies and more homes will be broken in to, more convenient stores will be robbed, more drug dealers will surface which puts your kids in danger, and ultimately there will be more death  with in our most precious commodity, our youth!

Dianne Wiffin, spokesperson for the State Department of Correction believes this is a “Public Health Function” and that those committed should go to a Department of Public Heath Facility. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, if first we had a facility to go to that had enough beds and enough time to recover or even begin to think about recovery. If our Insurance companies would pay for more that three to four days before you get “the boot” or if the child or person seeking recovery can in fact find a bed at all.

MASAC has been the one place that saved countless lives and a place so many over the years owe their lives to and give back to society because of it, I know many young people who are now productive tax paying citizens with long term sobriety who went there including my very own son who was there years ago and today is alive and clean and sober.

Does Dianne Wiffin know the cost of incarceration? Because she will find out once MASAC closes and it will cost the corrections department and WE the taxpayers far more money.

Another Myth is that people are not sent there to get out of jail, many of them have not ever stepped foot in a court house or even been arrested. Their families petition the court to get help for their loved ones before they end up committing crimes of desperation which saves the citizens in the end and prevents parents from burying their children if they are lucky which many have not been if you look at the Opiate Overdose death statistics on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s website. As of today there have been 15 funerals since January this year on the south shore that I have either attended or heard about all young people whose families will never be the same. I have known of young requesting a Section 35 on themselves when there is not a bed to be found.

We know that there is not a magic cure for addiction, but please help us save MASAC and at least have the chance to reach our young sons and loved ones before crime or tragedy strikes our families. As a citizen you should feel safer knowing there is a place that can treat people suffering from this epidemic. Should MASAC close and not be an option the addicted, many very young will be out doing very desperate and dangerous acts including driving under the influence.

Yes, the citizens have High Point in Brockton which is a great program and already overwhelmed causing people to be let out early often due to the fact they only have 104 beds and they are always full. What is going to happen with out the beds at MASAC? How is one facility going to handle civil commitments for the entire state of Massachusetts? The Tax payers will pay more later there will be more death and suffering families and public safety will be of more concern.

Joanne Peterson

Learn to Cope

www.learn2cope.org

You are not alone. God bless your families, may prepetual light shine upon your children. I am so sorry………….

Joanne

Writing on the Edge
(a mother-poet’s response to addiction)

My words lie in a heap
like a shipwreck on a rocky coast
where no lighthouse beamed its warning.
Splintered, submerged in relentless
wave after punishing wave,
my words ache to be salvaged
but tremble at the sight of me
coming close with a pen.
They breathe a sigh of relief
when the words: milk-bread-cat food
is all I pick out from the ruins.

Do they know I can’t
lift them – the real words -
from their stuck place?
Do they know I am weary
with the weight of them?
Wasted words suck my energy
like barnacle-parasites,
like me trying to save my daughter
with a Section 35
when she’s drowning
and she let’s go of my hand,
saying, “It won’t work, Ma.”
Her cold Atlantic-blue eyes smirk,
and she swims the other way.

Being raised on tales
of red-hooded girls who strayed from the path,
grandmothers with big teeth,
fine red-leather shoes that would not stop dancing
and bloody severed feet,
I know that life is treacherous.

But I thought that was someone else’s story.

Someday,
when my stomach stops heaving
from the words that shock and awe –
like heroin addiction and the tracks on my daughter’s arms,
like denial, detox, relapse
like you didn’t cause it and you have no control
like one day at a time
like enable, overdose, narcan –
there may be no flinching if
gently
I invite my words
into a poem
that ends
with hope
that all shall be well
with my daughter,
again.

Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission

Announces FINAL HEARING

Thursday, September 10, 2009

11:00AM

Gardner Auditorium, Massachusetts State House, Boston

(Boston) – On Thursday, September 10, 2009, the Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission will hold the seventh in a series of hearings regarding the state’s growing rate of OxyContin and heroin addiction.  

The 14-member Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission will hold the hearing at

11:00AM, Thursday, September 10 at the Gardner Auditorium

in the Massachusetts State House.

“Our seventh public hearing will focus on the insurance companies’ stake in substance abuse treatment, as well as provide an opportunity for the public to tell their stories,” said Senator Steven A. Tolman (D-Boston), commission chairman. “At a time when healthcare reform is on the national stage, the Commonwealth must continue to look for ways to improve the services we provide to those with substance use disorders.  These public hearings afford the chance to learn so much from both experts and those directly affected by this devastating disease. “

The Massachusetts OxyContin and Heroin Commission was created during the 2007-2008 legislative session and plans to release a final report of its findings in the fall.

Public attendance and participation is vital; the Commission needs to hear the public’s stories and experiences to develop relevant policy recommendations.

###

Jennifer Fay

Legislative Director

Office of Senator Steven A. Tolman

Second Suffolk & Middlesex District

Room 312-C, State House

Boston, Massachusetts 02133

617.722.1280