Lyn G. Brakeman 1
If Only…..What If?
Let’s change ‘If Only’ to ‘What If’.
If only has a ring of sorrow, regret more profound than passing guilt or reckless abandon of responsibility. These words are tragic words, and especially so when it comes to addictive disease. What if is open, hopeful, and full of promise for creating change together, daring to try new ideas and approaches.
The Charlestown Substance Abuse Coalition (CSAC), ably directed by Sara Coughlin, along with Charlestown churches, St. John’s Episcopal church and St Mary’s-St. Catherine Siena and MOAR( Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery) hosted an evening on January 11 to focus on the addiction crisis in our community, most specifically the opioid crisis. As many as 400 families locally have lost children to drug addiction. Charlestown is not the only community affected by this epidemic. There were tables around the room with materials and representatives from other area towns—all with the same goal and all with creative ideas and strategies.
Father Jim Ronan, pastor of St Mary-St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Charlestown, opened the evening with a prayer, acknowledging our dependence on God, a power greater than ourselves, for guidance, healing, and empowerment for change.
This isn’t my issue. I don’t see this in my parish. We already have so much to do. It’s a moral failure, so just forgive, right? If everyone just came to church. What is Christian love anyway—and how much is too much?
We watched a film, ‘If Only’, made by Jim Wahlberg from Walpole. He said Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) found him and helped him get sober 27 years ago in prison.The film is his effort to pay back with gratitude for his wellness. Jim is a father who knows the pain of watching a son succumb to addiction. “My son is now three years clean, and has God in his life. My other son stars in this movie.”
We saw a mother suspect that her son, 17, was using drugs, watch his moods shift and lurch, search his room for clues, worry and feel impotent, seek help, try without success to enlist the support of other families who could not believe that their child was using, request that a doctor test her son for opioid use, confront her son, weep, listen to his excuses and his anger at her, suffer with thinking she did something wrong to cause this—and finally, get her son into treatment. We also saw how this affected all the members of this family.
Key phrases to remember and to wonder about:
I only did it once, Mom.
His parents were home, Mom.
Why are you doing this to me? Don’t you trust me?
I don’t belong in this group (a psychiatrist who led a group for addicts)
You don’t know my son, he wouldn’t do that.
If only I’d said something sooner!
I wrote down: It takes a village to raise an addict. It takes a village to get an addict clean.
The panel of respondents was facilitated by Maryanne Frangules from CSAC. She told us that Attorney General Maura Healey lives in Charlestown, and she read a letter from Healey, who was in DC addressing Congress about the opioid crisis, supporting this effort. This crisis has been cited as a priority by the Governor of New Hampshire, and is also a national focus as we heard in President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Marietta Williams, MGH pediatrician, detailed the medical issues: Adolescents are especially vulnerable because they are in a major growth phase, second only to the one in the womb. “Immature livers can’t chew up the toxins and metabolize them. Developing livers get used to the drug, develop tolerant for it, so more is needed to get the high. It takes tons of anesthesia to knock an adolescent out.” Toxic chemicals also interfere with brain development. A brain on drugs can’t make connections necessary for normal development.
Michelle Williams, Chief Probation Officer for the Charlestown Division of Boston Municipal Court: “We can’t arrest our way out of this crisis.” There is need for community support, including police, courts and citizens. She helped established the first drug court in Charlestown, a training/awareness program in law enforcement issues and addiction for young people. Police (some departments only) are trained and authorized to carry and administer Narcan, a medication that reverses an overdose. But law enforcement officials, such as probation officers, are not yet licensed to carry Narcan.
Father Joe White, Roman Catholic priest from Addiction Recovery Pastoral Care Services invited us all to use the Serenity Prayer and asked us to notice the second half of it, which begins “Living one day at a time . . .” “Mostly I just listen to the stories,” he said. How can faith communities be helpful?
-practice hope
-listen don’t tell or lecture or shame
-addicts often struggle with the concept of God, and recovery has a spiritual component
-get to know these who come to the AA meetings in your parish; go to a meeting
-learn the Twelve Steps
-offer yourself as someone who is trustworthy and will listen without condemnation
-when drugs take over the first thing to go is God
-If only I’d said something sooner! Why was I afraid?
Matthew Robinson, co-founder of Turn It Around, a program of education for youth and families. Matt grew up in Charlestown and lived with someone who was drug addicted. He spoke of the pain and powerlessness of families. “The earlier the intervention the better.” Try to understand and not judge youth. Keep them busy—school, sports, arts.
Attorney Andrew Robinson, State Bureau of Substance Abuse Services spoke of legislation to try to make laws that control the number of opiate pills a physician can prescribe and to limit prescriptions. There is an effort to work with with the American Medical Association on prevention and raising physician awareness. AG Healey has a task force at work on opiate addiction prevention. Efforts are in process to work with drug companies not to promote/advertise drugs for more than one or two things. 80% of heroin addicts start on pain meds. NOTE: There is a difference between chronic pain and situational pain. (See the movie, “Cake”.)
People asked the big WHY? question. Is this a cultural phenomenon or a situational experience.? Recovering people say people use drugs to numb feelings. Why now do we have so many feelings to numb? Look around and listen. In mental health fields, we often say: If you want to know what is going on in a society look at its youth. Wisdom to ponder. Myself, I think it has much to do with what the culture tolerates. Everyone does it? We start saying this in kindergarten. Young corporate executives now are beginning to use opioids just to get an energy charge.
Spiritually, I know that the loss of God, or the struggle with the God-idea, is high on the list of both questing hunger and deep doubt. The churches would do well to do more teaching about our religion, its practices and its teachings, especially Bible and Jesus. This need for formation of the laity gave birth to Education for Ministry (EfM). It is not so much the lack of caring and pastoral care or good liturgy, or even social justice ministries, that weakens us, as it is a weakness in the teaching ministry, especially in progressive/liberal churches. Scottish theologian Elizabeth Templeton said: “We Christians have failed at the task of apologetics.” And I think young people are asking and seeking for just that, without the control agenda attached to it as it is in many evangelical churches.
What can St. John’s do? What if we……………???
-start talking about this crisis and assessing our own levels of understanding
-look more closely at how we use our Christian ethic of love to enable codependence…….Christians are vulnerable to codependency because of our ethic of “love”
- connect with CSAC and ask what would be helpful
-attend an AA meeting and listen or an AlAnon meeting and listen
-remember that our small children will grow up
-have educational forums, form partnerships with other churches and deaneries to host events and speakers
-understand what responsible use means
-preach and pray about this i.e. about the Serenity Prayer or prayers for addiction and our community of Charlestown in the throes of crisis
-decide to use the Prayers of the People to actually pray
- incorporate more silence into our worship
-begin to use the Serenity Prayer in our personal lives
- use the prayer for addictions in the BCP, p. 831
-notice how much of this prayer applies to those who, through ignorance and shame, have lost their own sense of self and freedom by becoming addicted to the addict and trying to fix her
-in our liturgy, we can add another collect to the others for a season as fitting for focus
This evening was a community intervention on itself to address a community health issue. No one gets sick alone, and no one gets well alone. Christians believe that all flesh is spiritually connected to God, to divinity. That’s why we bring our energy, expertise, prayers to bear on an epidemic that affects us all. That’s how we practice Christ’s Great Commandment to love God, self and neighbor as self. We do it for the love of Christ. We do it for the future: our children.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
AMEN
The Serenity Prayer, written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (d. 1971) is longer than these first lines. The next line begins: “Living one day at a time . . .”
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Scriptural wisdom from Jesus: “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Matthew 6:34.
O blessed Lord, you minister to all who came to you: Look with compassion upon all who through addiction have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of your unfailing mercy; remove from them the fears that beset them; strengthen them in the work of their recovery; and to those who care for them, give patient understanding and persevering love. AMEN. (Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, p. 831)