I have finally made it to my final quarter before graduation with my Bachelor’s Degree.
I have also been revisiting a series of stories I wrote back in 2021 about Celebrate Recovery and where those people are now in their journey.
I was somehow missing a couple of credits, so I had to add a specialization course this quarter and I chose to take introduction to addiction theories.
I chose this because of the amazing stories I hear every month when I write the “Celebrate Recovery – Where are they now?” series.
The courage these wonderful people have when they open their hearts and lives to the public to some of the hardest, darkest parts of themselves, and they each do it with a collective goal of helping even just one person.
That is true power. And wherever that power may come from, it is spreading in our community like a blanket of love and care.
Most thank God for giving them the strength to get sober, or deliver them from drugs, alcohol, or mental illnesses. Some give credit to the Barry County Drug Court; some thank their friends and family who both stood by them and gave them boundaries.
It is hard, if not nearly impossible, to find someone who has not been touched by some form of a “hurt, habit or hangup” as Celebrate Recovery calls it.
Kyle recently attended a Narcan Awareness meeting hosted by the Family Advocacy Solutions in Monett and Life Change here in Cassville.
While he was only there for the first presentation, a speech by one of my Celebrate Recovery series participants Holly Rivera, he was impressed with the turnout and the message.
He said Rivera talked about stigma, how everyone deals with it no matter their walk in life and what is public or not. One thing that stuck was Rivera said after my story on her came out in 2021, she was shocked by the number of people who approached her at her job at the grocery store deli.
“They’d say, I didn’t realize you were one of those people,” Kyle recounted.
With a look of insult, she responded, “Well what kind of person did you think i was?”
There is an epidemic in this country — in this community — called the opioid crisis.
In just the few months I have been processing obituaries, there have been two with the cause of death listed as drug overdose. There have also been others before January, some of whom I have known personally.
It is a significant punch to the gut in our small communities because, as I said, we all have been touched by a hurt, habit or hangup.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2019, 70,630 people died of a drug overdose; 745,000 have used heroin in the past year; 2 million used methamphetamines in the past year, and 50,000 people used heroin for the first time (for a 12-month period ending in June 2020).
I was on TikTok the other day and there was a woman crying, struggling with having been sober for 4 days. The video was stitched by a man in recovery who had a lot of great advice for her, but my favorite part was when he said, “you can’t get any more sober than sober.”
He told her that after just four days, alcohol is out of your system and you are sober.
There is plenty of work that comes in before and after sobriety, but accomplishing that first step to sobriety is a mountain of a victory.
Whether you are on day one, year one or decade one, you are making a decision to change the track of the hurts, habits, and hangup that affect you and those around you.
As the nation is covered in a blanket of cold, sadness, that comes with substance abuse, there are groups fighting that right here in our community. There are groups trying to keep you alive and fight the stigma and bring awareness to those around you. There are groups that have a place for you, whether you are on the verge of jail for drug use or struggling with your mental health, and there are people who care about you.
Even if this is all just to save you, one person in our community, it is worth every word typed, every meeting hosted and every testimony shared.
TroutMom says you are worth it, and a community coming together is a community saving lives.
Jordan Troutman is an Owner and General Manager of the Cassville Democrat, a wife, a mother of two daughters, and a student at Capella University majoring in Marriage and Family Therapy. She may be reached at jtroutman@cassville-democrat.com.
