If you are participating in the
16th Annual Hendricks House & Hansen House
Charity Golf Tournament Tomorrow
(Tuesday, September 25, 2012)
at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, NJ

Don't forget this year's NEW schedule:

8:30am - Breakfast & Registration
10:00am - Shotgun Start
3:30pm (after golf) - Dinner, Silent Auction & Awards

We're looking forward to beautiful weather
and a fantastic tournament.

See you in the morning, and THANK YOU for your support!

www.hansenfoundationnj.org

Prescription Drug Abuse and the Future of America

By R. Gil Kerlikowske | September 21, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed inAddiction, Community Related, Prescription Drugs & Young Adults


Last month, I visited a fellow Medicine Abuse Project partner—Project Lazarus—an organization on the forefront of combating the prescription drug abuse problem. Project Lazarus is located in Wilkes County, North Carolina, an area of the country that has borne a disproportionately large part of the burden caused by medicine abuse. While there, I met a group of dedicated people working hard to reduce medicine abuse in the area and across the country—doctors, leaders and law enforcement officers. I have great admiration and respect for all of the people I met at Project Lazarus, but one individual in particular stood out for me.

Donna Reeves is a mother from North Carolina who tragically lost her daughter to a drug overdose in 2006. She spoke of the importance of involving a diverse range of people in the conversation about prescription drug abuse—emphasizing that this problem doesn’t just affect one demographic, but all age groups across the geographic and socio-economic spectrum. Perhaps most importantly, Donna highlighted the urgent need to educate parents on the signs of drug abuse, the tools available to help young people seek treatment and the existence of a life-saving overdose reversal drug, Naloxone. Donna’s message was heartbreaking, but it’s one we must hear: education is one of the most powerful ways to prevent drug abuse.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classify prescription drug abuse as an epidemic. While there has been a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that approximately one-fourth of people aged 12 and over who used drugs for the first time in 2010 began by using a prescription drug non-medically.

Alarmingly, the majority of new or occasional nonmedical users of pain relievers obtained the drug from family or friends for free or took them without asking. Chronic users were more likely to obtain the drugs from doctors or by buying them. What can we learn from this? We know that securing medicine in the home—and disposing of unneeded pills—can help prevent medicine abuse from ever beginning.

Securing medicines in the home and disposing of medicine properly is an important part of the solution, but it must be accompanied by prescription drug monitoring programs in every state, law enforcement efforts to thwart improper prescribing practices and, of course, education for parents, prescribers and patients.

If you have unneeded medicine in the home, please take advantage of National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day on September 29th, when the Drug Enforcement Administration will open sites across the country to receive unused prescription drugs—no questions asked. If you’re a parent, please take the time to talk to your children about the harm caused by medicine abuse, and educate yourself on the signs of abuse. Working together, we can build a better future for our country’s young people—free of the pain caused by medicine abuse.

RECOVER PROJECT MASSACHUSETTS

About
Our peer-developed Code of Ethics is at the heart of our work
MissionThe RECOVER Project is a community open to all concerned with alcohol and drug addiction. We exist to foster recovery and empower individuals, families, and the communities of Franklin County.
DescriptionWe provide peer-to-peer support based on the guiding principles that people can and do recover from alcohol and drug addiction and that competence and wisdom reside in those with lived experience.
General InformationOur Code of Ethics is a set of guidelines that dictates how we interact and relate at the RECOVER Project. It also dictates decisions
about our programs and policies.



68 Federal Street
Greenfield, Massachusetts 01301


Phone (413) 774-5489
Website http://www.recoverproject.org

New Hope Recovery Ranch Nevada

About
New Hope Recovery Ranch is one of the only places in the country where the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit come together to ensure that those in the long-term residency program welcome sobriety into their lives.
MissionNew Hope Recovery Ranch is a 6 to 12 month live-in addiction recovery program that gives men practical and spiritual tools for continuing whole and healthy lives.
Company OverviewPastors Rick and Teresa McKinney are the founders and directors of New Hope Recovery Ranch. Both Rick and Teresa were set free from serious personal addictions and through their ministry at New Hope Recovery Ranch in Silver Springs, NV they have been able to help thousands of men over the last ten years.
Description
The desert is an environment of dangerous extremes. Certainly, the choices made in the desert are of life and death.

At New Hope Recovery Ranch, located in Silver Springs, NV, the desert is the perfect setting for recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. Rebirth into a God-centered life is the ultimate result.

New Hope Recovery Ranch is a non-denominational, Christ-centered, long-term residency
program for men that allows recovering alcoholics and addicts to set aside much-needed time and effort to focus on what is causing the downward spiral—and teaches them to claw their way back up. Residents focus on asking, considering, and responding to life’s basic questions—and quickly determining God has all of the answers.

According to Pastor Rick McKinney, “Healing at New Hope includes spiritual, mental, and physical healing. You’re feeding your mind, body, and spirit here. When you feed these, you’re going to get well.”

New Hope Recovery Ranch integrates miracles from three sources—The Bible, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and animal therapy. Residents spend a minimum of six months on campus. Recovering alcoholics and addicts stay in the residency program for up to one year, learning about the all-encompassing love of Jesus Christ and the awesome power of the Holy Spirit.








Location P.O. Box 961, Silver Springs, Nevada 89429


Contact Info
Phone (775) 577-4734
Email newhoperr1@aol.com
Website http://www.newhope-church.com

Study Links Mothers Who Let Kids Sip Alcohol and Children’s Reported Drinking

By Join Together Staff | September 19, 2012 | Leave a comment | Filed inAlcohol, Parenting, Prevention & Youth


A new study finds a link between mothers’ belief that it is acceptable to let their children sip alcohol, and their children’s reported alcohol use. The study found one-quarter of mothers of young children believed allowing children to sip an alcoholic drink would likely deter them from drinking in the future.

The study of 1,050 pairs of mothers and their third-grade children, who participated in the four-year study, found 33 percent of children reported alcohol use. “A strong, significant association was found between parental ‘prosipping’ beliefs and children’s reported alcohol use,” the researchers report.

The mothers with prosipping attitudes said they believed allowing their children to try alcohol would make children less likely to drink as adolescents and make them better at resisting peer pressure to drink. Some also said early tasting would discourage future use because of alcohol’s taste, or because drinking would become less enticing when the children realized their parents allowed it, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The study found four in 10 mothers said not allowing a child to taste alcohol would increase their desire to try it. In the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, the researchers cite previous studies that conclude that early drinking is a known primary risk factor for problem drinking during the teenage years. They also refer to studies that suggest teens are more likely to imitate their peers’ drinking habits than their parents’.

Mothers who were more highly educated, and those who worked outside the home, were more likely to allow their children to sip alcohol.

Death By Prescription Drugs: How Dare You Say My Son "Deserved" It

Katie Allison Granju

Blogger, MamaPundit

Our nation is in the midst of a public health emergency the likes of which we have not seen since the first decade of AIDS' spread across America. And much like the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the victims of the current crisis are both vilified and ignored, the families of the victims are shamed into silence, and the public at large doesn't know enough to protect itself.

I am speaking of drug overdose, which is now killing tens of thousands of Americans annually, while leaving many thousands more mentally and physically disabled for the rest of their lives. The vast majority of drug overdose deaths are the result of two types of highly addictive, and highly profitable, prescription drugs: opiates and benzodiazapenes. In 2010, one of the more than 25, 000 Americans who died as the result of drug overdose was someone I adored with all my heart: my 18-year-old firstborn, my son Henry.

Before I learned that Henry was addicted to pills, I simply had no clue that the problem of pill addiction and overdose was quietly yet savagely ripping apart the East Tennessee community in which we make our home. Yes, I'd seen the media coverage of "hillbilly heroin," but the threat of such a thing seemed remote and disconnected from my own family's "normal" life. And really, there was no way I could have known what a very serious threat pills posed to my teenage boy. That's because even though an astounding 150 to 200 people a year die of drug overdose every year in our small, southern city, it's as if these people have simply disappeared.

Individual overdose deaths are not reported in the newspaper. Obituaries do not list overdose as a cause of death. Local law enforcement never arrests the dealers behind the overdoses. The local medical examiner routinely seems to rubberstamp the cause of virtually all overdose deaths as "accidental," thus making it easy for the criminal justice system to pretend that no crime occurred. And in my adopted hometown, which I've come to love over the years, the shame and stigma that still exists around losing a child or spouse to drug overdose leads most families to keep their loved one's actual cause of death a big secret.

Given this perfect storm of invisibility that exists around overdose deaths, how could I have known that a teenager living in our county is more likely to die of a pill overdose than from a car accident or a gunshot wound. Shockingly, on the day my son suffered his deadly overdose, another teenager - a beautiful girl named Amber Blizard - also fell victim to illegally diverted prescription pills. That's right; TWO teenagers suffered fatal drug overdoses on the same day in the same small city, and yet no one seemed to consider this remarkable. Not the law enforcement officials who didn't treat the sites of either teen's overdose as a crime scenes. Not the local media that never noticed the fact that two kids were killed in the same way on the same day.

What if two teens had been shot or stabbed to death on the same day? Or two 18-year-olds from two different local high schools or college freshman classes had died in car wrecks on the same day? Even if both teenagers bore some responsibility for the accidents that took their lives - perhaps by speeding or driving under the influence - their deaths would have been noted by our community. But drug overdose victims are treated like they never existed, or deserved to exist.

I learned after my son died that our state's criminal statutes, as well as federal criminal laws both unequivocally define drug distribution resulting in the death of someone else as homicide. In fact, under federal law, there are more severe penalties for adults over 21 whose drug dealing causes the death of someone under the age of 21, as was the case for my son, and in many other adolescent OD fatalities.

There is a disconnect, though, between what the law says, and how it is applied. The law doesn't care whether the person who died of the overdose was struggling with addiction him or herself. But in practice, victims who are addicts get a lesser form of justice. After my son died, a local assistant DA told me that I needed to understand that my teenager was "an unattractive victim" due to his addiction to pills, as if that were a reasonable excuse for ignoring the fact that the dealers behind the drugs that killed Henry would remain free in our community to provide drugs to some other at-risk kid.

Similarly, the law doesn't have a category for victims who somehow "asked for it." If a teenage boy asked an adult to shoot him in the head, for instance, even offered the adult money to do it, would that absolve the adult who fired the fatal shot from criminal responsibility? Of course not. Yet just as in the early days of the spread of AIDS, the victims of overdose are far too often treated as disposable and invisible, because so many believe that they have only themselves to blame for their own deaths.

As long as we continue acting as if overdose victims are not real people who are worthy of equal interest by the criminal justice system, public health authorities, and the media, the numbers of the dead will continue to rise. It was only after Americans' attitudes toward AIDS victims began to shift from blame to compassion that we were finally able to come together in a unified national effort to fight the monster that had already been allowed to devour an entire generation of young gay men. Similarly, until we stop acting as if the tens of thousands of Americans currently dying each year of overdose are unworthy, invisible and disposable, this new monster - the one that took my beloved child from me before he had even had the chance to cast his first vote as an American citizen - will continue to roam our neighborhoods and snatch our children.

My son did not want to be addicted to pills, and he did not want to die before starting his freshman year of college. He certainly did not want to see any other kids hurt and suffer as he did from opiate addiction. In his memory, I now speak out often and loudly to let other parents know what I did not until it was too late, which is that kids are dying all around us, every single day. Until we stop acting as if it isn't happening, or telling ourselves that it could never happen in our own families, the band will continue to play on.

PLEASE LEARN MORE ABOUT HENRY LOUIS GRANJU'S LEGACY OF LOVE AND HOPE FOR YOUNG ADDICTS BY BECOMING A FRIEND OF HENRY'S FUND ON FACEBOOK:www.facebook.com/henrysfund