Christina Dent authored and sponsored this post. She is Founder & President, End It For Good. She can be reached at christina@enditforgood.com.
As I stood by the table talking with George Wood, he said something I immediately wrote down. “You have to build a life worth staying sober for or there’s no sense in staying sober,” he shared. George struggled with drug addiction for many years, finding recovery 16 years ago. Today he’s a pastor who is deeply invested in helping people recover from addiction through community and healing at The Timothy Initiative. He knows that unless people address the reasons why they’re using drugs, it’s very likely they'll keep using them. Drugs are an attempted solution, they’re not the real problem. He wants to help people heal from the wounds that made them reach for the drugs in the first place.
I met George at the Addiction & Faith Conference in Minneapolis, MN, earlier this month, where we were both speakers. What he said resonated with me because of the work we do at End It For Good, the Mississippi-based nonprofit I founded. We take a step back, survey the big picture, and invite people to consider approaches to drugs that prioritize life, preserve families, and promote public safety. Effective solutions are only possible when we identify and solve the root cause of a problem, and at the SHIFT Drugs & Addiction Summit on November 16 in Jackson, we’ll expose the roots as well as offer solutions.When it comes to drugs and addiction, we need to be asking “why” a lot more. Why has illegal drug use doubled in the last 20 years? Why has overdose become the leading cause of accidental death in the United States? Why is there so much crime from underground drug markets? Why hasn’t the approach of cracking down for the last 50 years worked? Why are there effective treatments for addiction and mental health challenges that most people have never heard of?
At the SHIFT Summit, speakers from Mississippi and across the country will be diving into these questions and more, offering answers. Dr. Randy Easterling, addictionologist and past president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, as well as Jackson-based addictions therapist Jeffery Harvey, will join us. So will Dr. Deborah Mash, who has spent years conducting research and pursuing FDA approval for psychedelic therapies for opioid addiction. John Shinholser, a Marine Corp. veteran with decades of personal recovery experience, will be speaking on kratom – the controversial plant that some people are using in place of opioids. Laurie MacDougall, a trainer for Allies in Recovery, will be speaking on CRAFT, an evidence-based method of engagement that family members with addicted loved ones can use to increase healthy family dynamics as well as make it more likely their loved one will decide to get help. Bonus: CRAFT training and support is available to every Mississippian through Allies in Recovery for a year for free!
If we don't shift our approach to drugs and addiction, one million people will die of preventable overdose in the next ten years in the US, not to mention the continued devastation of addiction and the public safety hazard of crime. While George Wood and many others are doing the crucial work of helping people heal from addiction, all of us need to look upriver for ways we can stop the many different streams of drug-related harm before they happen. Whether or not we use drugs, how we handle them impacts everyone. Better outcomes are possible if we consider different solutions. Join us at the SHIFT Summit to explore some of those.
