Coming Together conference unites community professionals on addiction and recovery
May conference brought national experts and authors to Kalamazoo
There is an old children’s fable about blind men and an elephant: one grabs hold of the leg and declares the elephant is very much like a tree; another holds the trunk and says it is like a snake; another holds the ear and says it’s like a fan; and still another pushes up against its side and affirms the elephant is like a wall. They are each correct, but only partly so.
And so it is with addiction and recovery. Medical professionals experience it one way. Social workers another.
Educators another. Police another. And lawyers still another.
For the first time, over 250 of these professionals who all deal with the causes and impacts of substance use disorder came together at a daylong conference at the Fetzer Center on Western Michigan University’s campus. Appropriately, the event was called, Coming Together: A Community Conference on Addiction and Recovery, and its mission was to build a collaboration among a cross-section of professionals and to promote an open conversation and understanding of addiction without stigma and judgment.
Headlining the event were three nationally renowned experts and authors, plus some of the area’s leading professionals in treatment and recovery. The conference was hosted by the Community Healing Centers, the Drug Treatment Court Foundation of Kalamazoo County, the Kalamazoo County Bar Association, Western Michigan University Specialty Program in Alcohol and Drug Abuse (SPADA), and by the law firm, Miller Canfield.
Estimates are that over fifty percent of emergency room visits involve alcohol or other drug addictions. Factor in to that equation that one-in-four children grow up with an alcoholic or drug-addicted adult, and it becomes easy to understand that the problem is widespread. The statistics are staggering, health consequences multiply and the economic impact is devastating.
If left untreated, addiction costs our community hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in emergency room visits, foster care, jail, motor vehicle accidents, lost productivity … the list just goes on and on. For every dollar that the community invests in treatment, we save twelve dollars. Likewise, every dollar that we cut from treatment costs us twelve.
And this is not someone else’s problem. This is a problem that touches all of us. The people affected by substance abuse are not “those” people. They are “our” people. Substance abuse affects families, children, professionals, students, mature people, young people, rich people, poor people, our neighbors, our friends and our co-workers. The need for more education and understanding about addictions is key to treating addiction with positive successful outcomes.
Opening the conference was William Cope Moyers, executive director of public policy at the Hazelden Foundation based in Minnesota and celebrated author of Broken: My Story of Addiction and Recovery. He describes himself as a “kite rising against the wind,” and has dedicated his life to helping others feel the same relief of a fresh start.
Following Moyers was Dr. Robert Ackerman, professor and program director of the Human Services Program Degree at the University of South Carolina at Hilton Head. He is the previous director of the Mid-Atlantic Addiction Research and Training Institute in Pennsylvania, and a co-founder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics.
As an author he has published numerous articles and research findings and is best known for writing the first book in the United States on children of alcoholics. Twelve books later, many television appearances, and countless speaking engagements he has become internationally known for his work with families and children of all ages. His books have been translated into thirteen languages.
Ackerman presented on how families are affected by addiction, and on appreciating how gender differences impact treatment and recovery.
Dr. Carlton Erickson followed Ackerman. Erickson is a research scientist, and a distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, and Director of the Addiction Science Research and Education Center in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin.
He has published over 260 peer-reviewed and professional articles, and is an Associate Editor of the scientific journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. He is the author of The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment (2007), which won a Hamilton Book Award in 2008, and Addiction Essentials: The Go-to Guide for Clinicians and Patients (2011).
Erickson spoke about how addiction is a brain disease, and on addiction science for clinicians and patients.
Afternoon breakout sessions included Recipes for Addiction Treatments that Really Work by Dr. Michael Liepman, medical director for the Community Healing Centers and professor of psychiatry at the Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies (MSU/KCMS), author of over 110 articles and former associate editor of the Journal of Substance Abuse; the Healing Power of Therapeutic Jurisprudence by drug treatment court judges and attorneys; Legal Issues and Addiction, a questions and answers discussion led by area attorneys; and Personal Addiction Journeys by drug treatment court graduates moderated by Charlene Taylor, Prevention Specialist, Community Healing Centers.
For many families and individuals, addiction is like the elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about it, but you can’t help but knock against it every other step. Professionals know the elephant is there, but this conference helped them come to terms with how best we can work together as a community to remove it.
The evening before the conference, over 290 community members attended a free presentation by Moyers at the Air Zoo. Moyers spoke about his personal recovery journey and the importance of reducing the stigma of addiction.
We all benefit when our community becomes stronger in partnership and knowledge. Bringing this disease—with its dismay, despair and desperation—out into the fresh air and sunlight enriches the possibility of recovery.
By Sally Reames, Executive Director, Community Healing Centers; William Schma, retired judge, president, Drug Treatment Court Foundation of Kalamazoo County; Robin King, attorney, president, Kalamazoo County Bar Association and C. Dennis Simpson, director, Specialty Program in Alcohol and Drug Abuse, WMU.
