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Treating addict must include family

International addictions expert lauds approach being taken by Tsawwassen’s Little House
stimson
Delta resident Jim Stimson (left) and Dr. Neil McKeganey from Scotland attended an international conference on addiction and recovery.

This article was written for the Optimist by Dr. Neil McKeganey, an internationally renowned addiction and recovery researcher. He was a speaker at a recent international conference about drug addiction and recovery in New Westminster. While in Canada, McKeganey stayed in Delta with his good friends, Jim and Jan Stimson. Before attending a 12-step recovery meeting at the Little House, Jim Stimson took McKeganey for his first-ever visit to a Tim Hortons. Stimson also took him for breakfast at IHOP (which he also loved) before participating in the Recovery Day Festival in New Westminster.

Recovery from addiction was the topic on everybody’s lips at a recent major international conference in New Westminster organized by the Last Door Treatment Centre.

The conference brought together speakers from Canada, the U.S., Portugal and the U.K. to discuss how best to respond to the growing addictions problem in Canada that has seen a shocking rise in drug-related deaths over recent years.

Politicians, treatment agency staff and treatment agency clients shared a commitment to redouble efforts at ensuring those whose lives have been touched by addiction are helped to recover. Speakers outlined the terrible impact substance abuse and addiction can have on parents, as well as on children, who often pay a high price for their parents’ drug and alcohol problems.

If we are to meet the needs of children, and ensure their own desperate circumstances are not repeated in generations to come, services are needed that will support these children over many years.

One of the world leaders in this field, Dr. Claudia Black, described circumstances in which children are neglected, abused and abandoned. One had the impression of a humpty dumpty scenario in which services had to work to rebuild children’s shattered identities and sense of self-worth. Professor George Vaillant, one of the world’s leading alcohol researchers, outlined for the more than 700 conference participants the importance of peer-to-peer support groups, including Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, etc. that provide a unique form of 24/7 support to individuals caught up in their addiction.

Other speakers outlined the growing public health crisis that is occurring now that fentanyl is being widely abused in Canada. Portugal’s drug czar, Dr. Jo Gulao, described the situation in Canada as a public health crisis.
Judy Darcy, B.C.’s minister for mental health and addictions, underlined that the number one challenge she was focussed upon, and which took her attention every single day, was how B.C. better meets the needs of those vulnerable individuals and groups affected by drugs and alcohol and also mental health problems.

For example, she said if she were to break her leg, there would be a rapid and integrated response from services that would attend to her every need. By contrast, if she were to suffer a mental health problem, the response, if one could call it that, would be inadequate, uncoordinated, late and, in some cases, entirely absent. This is a situation she emphasized her government is determined to remedy.

As the final speaker, my presentation outlined the dangers of treatment agencies within Canada failing to optimize addicts’ recovery and focusing too much on reducing the harm associated with their continued drug use.

In Scotland, where harm reduction efforts have been prioritized over the last two decades, the country has seen a continuous rise in the number of addict deaths. It is possible to reduce some of the harms associated with drug use by providing clean injecting equipment and sites, as well as substitute drugs like methadone. However, where individuals continue to use illegal drugs over many years, there will be an accumulated negative impact on their health, which in time will result in a rising number of deaths.

In Scotland, the phrase “trainspotting generation” (from the movie Trainspotting) has been coined to describe those addicts who, in the face of a raft of harm reduction measures, are still paying the ultimate price for their continued drug use.

In listening to many of those at the conference who recounted their experience of the impact of addiction on their lives, one had a sense of the maelstrom that families are often caught up in as they struggle to respond to their children’s drug and alcohol problems. Drawn into a downward spiral of hopelessness, fear, guilt, uncertainty and escalating problems, these families are struggling for their very survival. If we were to do nothing else, the need is to support these families.

Jim Stimson, who has worked in this field for more than four decades, emphasizes the importance of helping families survive the problems of their children’s addiction. If we can get to the families, we can help them provide the kind of support their children and they so badly need. If we fail in that respect, the families will often not survive and the chances then of the addict surviving are much less.

Recovery efforts need to move well beyond the confines of the established services working in this area. One of the most interesting developments that has been occurring in recent years is the growth in the number of employers and unions supporting programs providing drug and alcohol support to their employees/members and families.

This is an area which is likely to expand in the coming years as more a worksites come to recognize the multiple harms of addiction on their work environment, employees and their families.

If there was one message that came through clearly from this conference, it is that recovery works. In response to any discussion about drug and alcohol problems in society, one can become excessively gloomy believing that when an individual has become addicted there is nothing that can be done to help them. This is not the reality.

With the right support in place, individuals do recover from addiction and they go on to lead full and productive lives. The challenge then is to both ensure that individuals and families can access the services they need and to avoid the perception that once an individual is addicted they are lost forever.

Canada, like many countries, needs an increase in the provision of services that are focused on optimizing an individual’s recovery from addiction.

Neil McKeganey, Ph.D., is director of the Centre for Substance Use Research, Scotland. Visit: www.substanceuseresearch.org.