Addiction event focuses on hope for recovery

Sep. 22--Speakers at Sunday's annual Night of Hope delivered a two-pronged message about addiction.

One, there is hope for recovery. And two, there is a fight to keep illegal narcotics from claiming more victims.

Virginia Krieger spoke of the latter to the roughly 75 participants who bundled up against an evening chill to remember those who lost their lives through addiction. The downtown ceremony included both personal accounts and a candlelight vigil.

Krieger is the founder of PAIN -- Parents Against Illicit Narcotics -- and Breaking The Silence, a video project that aims to humanize those who died because of an overdose.

Such efforts were perhaps the furthest things from Krieger's mind nearly six years ago, That's when her daughter, 26-year-old Tiffany Leigh Robertson, unknowingly ingested a fatal mix of heroin and fentanyl. Robertson had fallen through a rotten wooden porch while delivering clothes to a needy family, and when her doctor sent her to a pain clinic that could not see her for eight weeks, she accepted a pill that she believed to be oxycodone from a friend.

It wasn't, and she died Feb. 2, 2015, from the illicit compound.

Soon after, Krieger, a former investigative analyst in the health insurance industry, dedicated herself to learning all she could about the opioid epidemic.

"We haven't seen the full course of this yet," she said. "Unfortunately, the CDC's numbers are off. A new study that was just conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University uncovered that the number of drug-related deaths are more than double the CDC estimates. In 2016 alone, instead of the 63,000 lives, we lost 142,000 lives to drug-related causes.

"We've been measuring this epidemic by the number of deaths. What we've been advocating for with Parents Against Illicit Narcotics is to stop tracking the deaths, which are two years behind, and start tracking the overdoses themselves."

A mechanism already exists to do this, Krieger said. It is called ODMAP -- Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program -- and first responders and police officers use it to enter overdose information into a smart phone, which then goes to a central processing center. However, Krieger added, these numbers have yet to be made available to the public.

"What it will do, if we can make it available to the public, is to be able to measure this epidemic by the overdoses on a weekly basis, instead of responding two years after the fact," she said.

HOPE IS DOPE

Hope for recovery came from two former addicts, who spoke of their respective journeys into the depths of addiction and their battles back to sobriety.

Jed Hill, a Struthers, Ohio, native and former Penn State football player, joined Ken Clowes, a residential program worker at The Care Center in Butler who also works in the Community Initiatives Department at Butler County Community College, in espousing concepts put forth in the Hope is Dope rehab program.

Spearheaded by Steve Treu, a licensed therapist with Quantum Revolution Counseling in Cranberry Township and a former New Castle News sportswriter, Hope is Dope focuses on what happens in the brain of someone suffering from addiction while also creating a bridge to recovery. It does this, the Hope is Dope Facebook page says, by helping recovering addicts "access various avenues to a healthy lifestyle that not only gives them a sense of community, belonging and empowerment but ... actually helps them achieve chemical balance inside the brain and restore them to a manner of living that is productive and fulfilling."

The key, Treu explained last year in a visit to New Castle, is the production of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers that also can create a sense of comfort and well-being. The effect is produced by endorphin receptors in the brain, which also are the final destination of addictive opioids. These "fake endorphins," as Treu called them, halt the body's production of actual endorphins.

The key to addiction recovery, Treu teaches, is to reawaken the natural endorphins.

"What I learned from Steve," said Clowes, who spent a decade of his life dealing with addiction, "is that there are literally a thousand different ways to do that. Two of the biggest, he would say, are spirituality and having a sense of community and belonging."

Other natural endorphin-resurrecting ideas include exercise, yoga, meditation, relaxation, improved nutrition, music and art groups and pet therapy. Both Clowes and Hill, though, attributed their recoveries to placing their faith in God.

"I didn't have that connection to a higher power, and I didn't have that connection to other people," Clowes said. "I just saw this quote yesterday: 'When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.'

"That's essentially what I did for over a decade of my life. I had no meaning, so drug use for me was just a constant distraction. When you do find a deep sense of meaning, life is pleasurable on its own. There's no need to seek pleasure, because you're already in it."

PRISON EPIPHANY

Hill conceded that he had gone to church as a child, but as he grew older "I would blame God for everything, but I wouldn't praise him for anything."

Thus, when the Nittany Lions enjoyed a Big Ten championship and a trio of bowl wins during his first three years in State College -- and later when he would become a model and actor, first in New York, and later in Los Angeles -- Hill credited himself for the accomplishments.

"Life was good. I was living life without God. I didn't need God," he said. "'I got this.' That was my mentality."

However, as a Penn State senior, he suffered a season-ending ankle injury that also ended his dream of playing in the NFL.

"I blamed God," he said. "I wasn't praising him while I was at Penn State, playing in front of 110,000 people, but I wanted to blame him when I got hurt."

In Los Angeles, Hill appeared on the covers of multiple fitness magazines and romance novels, did six national TV commercials and had roles on a soap opera and a Disney Channel show. However, three days after receiving a callback for a major motion picture, he was severely injured in a motorcycle accident, and returned to his native Ohio to recuperate.

""Why did you do this to me again, God?" he queried. "My life was going so good!"

His doctor prescribed Oxycodone, but he did not follow his physician's instructions.

""I didn't just take one or two. I'd take three or four," he said. "And I didn't take them orally; I started snorting them, just to feel a better high. This went on for a year."

When his doctor tried to take him off the painkiller, he moved on to other drugs. And when he started running out of money, he turned to crime to pay for them.

Ultimately, he was arrested in four Ohio counties, skipped out on a couple of court dates, and faced multiple felony charges. When the law finally caught up to him, he was sentenced to prison.

That's where his road back to sobriety began.

"I got handed this little Bible while I was in there. I started remembering some of the verses we used to read as kids," he said. "I got on my knees in my jail cell and asked God, 'God, can you please save my life? Can you please take this burden off my back? I can't do this anymore.'

"He did. Today, I have these relationships back with my family, thanks to Narcotics Anonymous, thanks to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.'"

The key, Hill said, is getting to a place where you can say no to the world, and yes to God.

'Not only did God completely restore me," he said, "but I got my record expunged. I am no longer a felon.

"God does things like this. We're all miracles just looking for a place to happen."

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