The Danger of Drugs: Helping by Accepting - Zvi Gluck

[Music] I'm looking around the room and I want to begin by saying thank you to everybody that's here thank you for taking a very very very important crucial first step from any of you it's more than the first step in realizing what we're battling as a community as a society as the universe drugs is no stranger to any of us whether it's someone in our own family family friend somebody that we grew up with or a neighbor hearts I think it sadly safe to say that almost everybody that I know knows someone that's been affected by addiction one form or another for many many years too many years we've done a great job of keeping things under the rug I'm finding every excuse not to deal with it making every excuse why it's not really a problem so coming here tonight is saying that this is no longer the case in the cookies community or in any community and so that I thank all of you one of the things that's really important that we all must realize is that these problems they affect every community every minority every majority there is no discrimination when it comes to addiction that race color creed gender makes no difference anybody and everybody can be affected by this and therefore we all must take whatever stands we can in order to make sure that we can protect those around us and those that we care about it's also not limited by age or gender you know there was a time that everybody thought people suffering from addiction were mostly men that's no longer true oh it's only teenagers that's also no longer to probably was never true and now you see you more but there's also a very delicate approach that we have to take with dealing with these issues especially when it's people older especially when they are no longer with us when they died of an overdose because there is family to where we have children but i'm going to say the word now that I can I've said many times before I personally think the dirtiest word that we have now we call you sir all is the S word the word should'a where we will not allow ourselves to get people help or to do what needs to be done equals were worried how it will affect somebody meeting their match and I gotta say not too long ago I was dealing with the family that had a woman from the prominent Tom regular community husband had a decent job she had a good job bunch of kids in her forties suffered from a severe addiction to painkillers after having been in a very bad car accident and I remember sitting in the house with one of the aluminum case managers and her family and her road and her husband and there was like seven or eight it was there we really tried getting than to realize the severity and extent of what was going on there and she looks at me and says I can't go to rehab because if i go to we have the neighbors will know my children will never find a suitable mate and i turned to her and I said straight to her face I said but the alternative is you might end up dead which she responded without batting an eyelash but my children will be considered orphans and it'll be easier to find the shuttle because no one's been multiple drugs now I can't say let me first say Barca so she isn't treatment right now so that's just story has an ending that we're working towards a positive goal but I can't say that I disagree with her theory because until our community is willing to take away that shame factor remove the stigma and let people get to help that they need this will continuously be a problem and the only way that we can fight that problem is when we as a community stand up together and decide that if someone has an issue with addiction I need to get help we should encourage that to get the help that they need and encouraging to get help doesn't just me helping yet as long as we believe that we can keep things under the road and we allow shame to get in the way of what we can do we will not be able to help those who need it and it's not just the Attic to need the help it's the family it's the friend the parents the siblings the children to really make sure that there's a real support structure and network and I also must say that just because we're there to give someone all this out that I have to say if it's cuz it's just the sad reality it doesn't mean that it always works but that doesn't mean that we give up we can never give up we also have to learn to recognize the underlying reasons before people turn to addiction I say many times people that turn to addiction are usually doing so because there's a very very serious pain somewhere deep within them so they just can't get the help that they need again a lot of this could be resolved if we remove the stigma and shame regarding mental illness people should go see a therapist people should be able to go get help before terms of something worse so it all comes back to that same factor of trying to give people a healthy great meaning in life many times it's people that were bullied at a young age then there's nowhere to turn now people they had learning disabilities sometimes as people are just want to have fun this is there are plenty of addicts out there that just really wanted to have a big time so there is no one common denominator for why people turn to substances or other addictions but more often than not the common denominator for people not getting the help that they need is because they're embarrassed to both already sold salon thurs when Allah Rafa said nobody that he knows died of hunger but divided shame not willing to ask someone for the food the last event that caused ups and I'm with him did together was about a year ago maybe a little more and dr. slay me Zimmerman said something's and I'm going to repeat it again his name it's fully very tragic when somebody dies it's tragic especially when they're young ladies it overdose and it's a real tragedy but as he said the tragedy the tragedy is not happened that day the tragedy was years in the making the tragedy was when these early warning signs were first there and people didn't notice it or chose to ignore it now extend everybody's point but the question is how can we turn that into something to help people get a better experience for the future and many times people that have these issues turn to many many different types of ways of exhibiting it whether it's at risk behaviors behavioral issues acting gala whether it's one or many forms of addiction drugs prescription street alcohol gambling internet porn for all the ways for people to escape from their reality to create a Colton reality one which they find can possibly help heal their pain many times it leads to emotional issues with think it's very disruptive within the family or religious issues that they get angry at God and get the community that they like today and then has to get into it we notice that there's more long-term effects leading to homelessness volume lifts teen pregnancy we see many times many times people that are suffering from addiction have very very big fan interactions and law enforcement they're hitting down criminal tax behaviors that are not something they would normally exhibit but now they don't know where to turn and then many times people ended up dead now I want to just go on this for a second because I think it's important to know especially when we talked about people to pass the way of an overdose I try to differentiate from a drug overdose from suicide and it's important that we know the difference and you might hear about this more from some of the other speakers most people that we know they died of a drug overdose did not want to die it's what we would call an accidental overdose more often they're not over seventy-five percent of the cases that we've interacted since we started on those in which its inception inside of me over 160 within our community maloney or finished removing in the tri-state area most of them I guess I should say that again for a fat it's important for us to know that we're losing hundreds of people that have died from addiction and other houses in the Queen community along that we know what since Rosh Hashanah they were over 11 that we may look that we know names times and which here alone handled it so we can answer that just cleans alone what the community most of these people actually had been some sort of treatment or another gone for help and have been clean many many of them these are longer what is it happening gets for some reason or another there's a trigger whatever that trigger maybe and they feel they don't have where to turn so they fall back to the path of addiction that they were previously added but what happens is the body was developed in the most amazing sense in any way maybe dr. Pierce College can explain this a little better where we build up a tolerance to substances that don't belong and that someone starts using more and more drugs the body needs a little bit of higher dose to achieve the same desire in life and this unfortunately increases slowly and slowly added the addict is moving on in life it's old they get sober get clean and at that point the body goes back to building up their resistance that is designed to the look to get rid of whatever tax rooms don't belong there but when somebody doesn't think about it they come out of rehab their chauffeurs are back with their families are back with their friends trying to get their lives back together and then they hear the trigger they remember the last dose that got them their desired height and that's the dose they want to go to because they remember that being diamond and that's what proves to be a deadly combination many times it's important to know that when people leave treatment programs we try as hard as we came to obviously not hope that the relapse but let them know that if they do they got to start at a lower dose so it's extremely important to understand what we as friends families and community members can do to avoid the rates of over those being what they are and the easiest thing that we can do is be supportive of those that are suffering and Charlene addicts are not bad people they're not evil many times you'll hear people say derogatory things you're suffering from addiction the suffering they hear support more than anything else when they come out of treatment they need our support even more so than when they went in giving people a reason to live a reason to thrive a reason to get up every day helping them find a job meaningful schooling helping the community allow them to reintegrate even though many time is painful whether it's embarrassment to the family or whether they've done something to commit a crime or to hurt somebody but we still have to do our best to go above our own comfort zone and help those that are sufferings be able to truly reintegrate back in and get the help that they need education about addiction awareness about addiction it like any other type of safety education we want to give our children don't cross the street without looking both ways I don't know any parent that ever said I'm here to tell that to my child because they're going to purpose in one industry but I'll hear that response from people when we're talking about educating about sexual abuse educating the boundaries educating about drugs and alcohol but when I speak to some of the schools and the principles are like guys we gotta get awareness in there oh we did any people are going to know what and it's going to make them do it more so I was doing a lecture to a bunch of a high school principal not too long ago and I don't forget that I would love to come into the school and at no cost randomly drug test as many children in that school that I felt necessary and there were two conditions to my request number one they have to say yes and number two is if anyone tested positive for drugs it would not be thrown out of school provided that they were getting the appropriate up not one principal accepted me to the challenge not one I'm going to say something now when I said just a few weeks ago i'll say it again now and for those that are here that are high school teachers and principals i'm sorry i do not know a single high school today in our community boys girls coleg orthodox considered modern orthodox or anything in between that has 0 George in it or where a high school student can't figure out how to get drugs if they wanted to I'll repeat that again and I'll repeat another 100,000 vine st I do not know a single high school today that a student in the high school will not be able to figure out a way to get their hands on TV go substances a choice I uh but I guess it's a leadership in the school's don't allow us to address it that's going to remain and that's where we the peener embody the community members have that ability to stand up and say enough is enough this is what we need to do to save our children's lives we're not talking about you know an issue where someone's cutting school or has a problem and we're talking about life and death over here we're talking about I dealt with the case not too long ago where somebody jumped over an overpass thinking he was Superman to get hit by a car as you hit the ground take into a hospital we put into treatment that i'm using caseworker stood by your side for about three weeks and i remember going into the principal in the school and i said hey you think we could do something now in the high school with some of your students in the assignment we don't have that problem this was an isolated incident every school someone has ritual it makes no difference it's all the same now I understand that in our community like i said before shame embarrassment keeping things under the rug but that's the stigma that we need to change we need to be able to confront this issue so we don't have to go to yet another family and say a sibling of yours passed away a child a parent the loved one a cousin a friend my first interaction with the diction I was 19 years old and one of my close friends when we she was going into car accident secondary to being hot that was how I got welcomed into this world and they're not too long after that I had another friends of mine along himself in a shower and he Shiva dormitory having left the suicide note about the sexual abuse IAM dirt as a young child I'm no stranger to this it wasn't like I woke up one day and had nothing better to do with my life and said hey I'm going to go break my head to make an organization chose me it's not an easy thing to do it's extremely difficult but I felt that I had no choice again it's not going to try to scare everybody here I just need everyone here to hear the truth and to understand the truth and to internalize the truth drugs kills silence kills shame kills and until we can stand up and do something about that I hate to say this but we are just as liable as everybody else he was sitting while sitting by idly and not doing anything is not the answer hello Tom Mallory aha applies to all of us we are not allowed to sit by idly and wash anyone that we know go through any unneeded pain or open the debt and that's why we're all here tonight and we'll keep doing these and if even one person ends up getting help for one person gets saved by an architect if that we get out shortly or one family like this change that was already well worth it but we really need to keep our eye on the prize and the prize is our future generations and whether it's focusing on a school-based program is community-based programming's or whatever else it might be we need to do everything we can to ensure that our loved ones have a great chance at survival and get the help that they desperately need it's extremely important to also understand that when somebody does have an addiction or a problem and they do can fight or they do ask for help it's at first reaction that first response that you give that person is going to make all the difference in what treatment they do or don't day or whether it will or will be affected we must be empathetic to that concern compassionate listen don't make promises you can't fulfill but if somebody comes with that I am struggling this is what's happening the responses thank you for telling me let me see what I can do to help even if you don't have the answer there's nothing wrong with saying I don't know what to do but I'm going to try to find someone you came to the right person you know that response of so many people saying on I can't believe you're telling you that you're throwing your life away you want to end up like someone so I guarantee you those responses don't help and again like I've been saying all night we're here to bring about change you can't continuously you know focus on the past or what things may or may not have and we have to focus on the future and now we can all move forward and I mentioned earlier breaking the taboo is extremely important in order to get this out and also making sure that if people want help we get there to appropriate places to provide the right help helping to increase awareness program such as this one in the school systems and our jewels in our communities whatever it takes and of course training the parents and the community leaders to really realizing what's going on we must remove the stigma the shame and the embarrassment from being that blockade from letting us get our loved ones the help that they desperately need we must live our lives for those around us who need us and not for ourselves to feel good about what we're doing I truly hope that we don't need to have any of these types of events anymore and i truly hope to the day that these issues will not happen and i don't have to be nervous at three o'clock in the morning when my phone rings that it's another carbon another sacrifice that was taken from us at a young age but until that day happens we have to keep fighting this fight getting our schools to bring in education and awareness getting our shul getting our communities community centers and today I know it's eleven o'clock on a moustache ah that's late night and it's so appreciated that everybody that's here stay as late as you did and show that you cared and please if there's anything that we can do feel anything I wouldn't can do for you anything any of these community organizations of leaders can do please reach out do not be shy we never know who the next life is that we're going to save or turn around and it could be someone extremely close to us thank you all very much and have a good night [Applause]