Speakers at Woodstock Academy’s Urgent Conversation about the opioid epidemic shared some strategies parents could use to help their children with mental health issues and drug addiction.
John Lally is a psychiatric nurse and founder of Today I Matter, a nonprofit established in his son, Timothy’s honor. T.I.M. is dedicated to reducing the shame and stigma of mental illness and addiction while promoting the physical, emotional, and mental health of the community.
Accept the fact that addiction is a chronic medical condition.
Treat those struggling with mental illness and addiction with compassion.
Demand that schools provide ongoing education and teach realistic facts about drug and alcohol use to students.
Advocate that school nurses be provided with Narcan and trained in its use.
Contact your legislators at the state and federal level to make mental illness and addiction priorities for funding.
Tim Ryan, whose book From Dope to Hope chronicles his successful business ventures with his alcohol and drug abuse, prison conviction and eventual recovery, gave some tough love advice to parents in the audience.
Monitor your children’s cell phones, he said. Have their passwords and check their history. He suggested parents and guardians investigate software they can install and use to monitor cell phones.
“Be in their technology,” he said.
Ryan blames himself for getting his own son, Nicholas, addicted to drugs. Nick died of an overdose. The book is dedicated to him.
“Don’t be your son’s or daughter’s friend,” he said. “You are the parent.”
He asked his audience not to accept bullying behavior.
“If you see someone being bullied, say something,” he said.
Kids will do things to fit in and be accepted. Taking drugs could be one avenue.
He advocated for community support of sober homes.
“These are people who want to turn their lives around,” he said. “Why wouldn’t we want them in our communities?”
Go to your town and Board of Education meetings. Demand that educational programs reach students at the junior high school level.
Get rid of all unused prescription drugs.
“If you don’t have a drug lockbox, then you’re an accidental drug dealer,” Ryan said.
Everyone should learn about the Good Samaritan law that holds harmless a person trying in good faith to help someone who has overdosed.
Jennifer Gimenez, who has graced the cover of more than 500 magazines, has starred in films with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and lived the life of a celebrity, said drugs don’t care whether you’re rich or poor.
“Drugs don’t give a [expletive] about us,” she said. “They don’t care if we’re rich, poor, Catholic, Protestant. They are killing everyone we love. We have to show up and fight every day.”
John Goodman, communications director for United Services, suggested that people turn the paradigm about drug addicts on its head. Use positive words to talk about people struggling with addictions and recovery, he said.
“It’s strong and courageous to ask for help,” Goodman said in a Q and A session after the presentation.
He’d like to see people from northeastern Connecticut lobby for fair spending amounts from the state government.
“Opioid addiction doesn’t discriminate,” he said. “It’s in our community and we need support.”
