Well it has been a while since I put a little something on here. I’ve been wanting to write something for quite awhile but I couldn’t find the words of passion. Till tonight. And I needed to share my thoughts on tonight’s topic; Recovery Month.
September is national recovery month supporting and promoting recovery from substance misuse, both drugs and alcohol. So many substance misuse services up and down the UK are sharing positive stories, recovery tips, information on how to refer into their service for supporting in overcoming addiction. Which is great! But what I have noticed is the lack of accessibility for the D/deaf community. The reason why I’m thinking about this tonight is because I’ve seen some videos of people sharing their stories. Story of hope to those who don’t believe that they cannot win their battle against addiction.
And they weren’t subtitled!! Which isn’t much of a shock, really. But at the same time, this shouldn’t be a shock. It is 2021 afterall. Well, I’m going off track here. Accessibility here is a big ongoing issue.
What I wanted to say was that addiction is a big issue, and can be a hidden issue in the deaf community. This often goes in hand with poor mental well-being. I read a few studies that estimated there are more D/deaf people that have substance misuse issues, compared to the hearing community. The studies are american. It was hard to find anything related to UK. As mentioned before, poor mental well-being often goes hand in hand with addiction. D/deaf community already have issues in accessing mental health services. These barriers are:-
- Accessibility barriers. Lack of information shared via sign language, no subtitles on videos, audios
- Lack of interpreters
- Support work who don’t understand issues affect the D/deaf community
- D/deaf people can be distrusting of hearing professional due to previous experience
- Stigma
- Lack of awareness
- Social isolation from the hearing community
Just to name a few. Theres loads more! and these will impact one’s seeking support.
Up and down the UK there are many services for substance misuse, but what are that actually doing to reach out to the deaf community. Appropriate services are far and few! If D/deaf people are already struggling to access health care services for both physical and mental health, why would they access a substance misuse service to experience the same issues. If one was able to access a substance misuse and managed to get adequate support in place for appointments, thats great. But a large part of the recovery process is outside formal sessions, such as groups where coping strategies are shared helping individuals learn new skills and not to feel alone in their struggles. These group can be groups within substance misuse service or out in the community such as AA/NA or SMART recovery.
Honestly there is so much more that I want to write, but its getting late and I have a toddler who will wake in less than 6hrs. If I have time I will write more blog post!
This is something close to me. I never been addiction to Alcohol, but I have used it as a coping strategy for when I was losing a big chunk of hearing, going through 2 operations that resulted in severe tinnitus. Alcohol did take some of that pain away, but I was fortunate to have great support around me and was well integrated in the hearing community despite my struggles. Not everyone has that.
Also sorry for any errors! I wanted to write this before I went to bed.
Here some links to services/information that are accessible for D/deaf
https://signhealth.org.uk/ An amazing organistation!! They dont have specific addiction support but they have support those to access substance misuse services.
⏳TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO MAKE YOUR PURCHASE COUNT AND SUPPORT OUR RECOVERY MONTH CAMPAIGN
Purchase any White, Gray, or Purple binder to support our Mutual Aid in Recovery campaign!
Campaign Mission: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery. This campaign will be ending tonight 9/30, 11:59 EST.
The Binders: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time.
100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx!
Please give them a follow and be sure to donate directly to continue supporting their missions even as this campaign ends.
Substance abuse and addiction impact our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
⏳TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO MAKE YOUR PURCHASE COUNT AND SUPPORT OUR RECOVERY MONTH CAMPAIGN
Purchase any White, Gray, or Purple binder to support our Mutual Aid in Recovery campaign!
Campaign Mission: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery. This campaign will be ending tonight 9/30, 11:59 EST.
The Binders: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time.
100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx!
Please give them a follow and be sure to donate directly to continue supporting their missions even as this campaign ends.
Substance abuse and addiction impact our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
⏳TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO MAKE YOUR PURCHASE COUNT AND SUPPORT OUR RECOVERY MONTH CAMPAIGN
Purchase any White, Gray, or Purple binder to support our Mutual Aid in Recovery campaign!
Campaign Mission: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery. This campaign will be ending tonight 9/30, 11:59 EST.
The Binders: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time.
100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx!
Please give them a follow and be sure to donate directly to continue supporting their missions even as this campaign ends.
Substance abuse and addiction impact our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
Purchase any White, Gray, or Purple binder to support our “Mutual Aid in Recovery” campaign!
Campaign Mission: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery. This campaign will be ending on 8/30, 11:59 EST.
The Binders: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time.
100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx!
Substance abuse and addiction impact our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
⚪️ MAKE YOUR PURCHASE COUNT! • Purchase any White, Gray, or Purple binder to support our “Mutual Aid in Recovery” campaign! • Campaign Mission: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery. This campaign will be ending on 8/30, 11:59 EST. • The Binders: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time. • 100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx! • Substance abuse and addiction impacts our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
CAMPAIGN MISSION: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery.
THE BINDERS: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time.
100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx!
Substance abuse and addiction impacts our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
CAMPAIGN MISSION: gc2b is dedicated to redistributing resources to uplift LGTBQIA+ individuals and organizations committed to community-oriented advocacy and support. In continuation of these efforts, we are proud to make a commitment to dedicate $2.47 for every original style Purple, Gray, and White binder we sell this month to honor Recovery Awareness Month and support 4 QTBIPOC individuals and organizations working in addiction and recovery.
THE BINDERS: $2.47 from ALL purchases of original style (half and tank) Gray, Purple, and White binders will be donated to beneficiaries of this campaign.
• Gray represents the first 24 hours of sobriety • Purple is the official color of National Recovery Month • White represents the chip given to folks who have newly started Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or who have recommitted themselves to sobriety
$2.47 represents 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Each day is an opportunity to commit to sobriety and recovery. One day at a time.
100% of the proceeds will be split amongst: @soberblackgirlsclub @l.nuzzles @recoveryfortherevolution and @iamgoddexx!
Substance abuse and addiction impacts our community disportionately. However, we are worthy of support, healing, and recovery to live full, vibrant, joyful lives. Make your purchase count this month and help us extend support to folks centering and prioritizing QTBIPOC individuals in healing and recovery. ✊
Lord was looking out for me cuz he new it would take a 2lb bag to handle my addiction problems!#SourPatchKids #Big #BigBag #BigAss #Addiction #Problems #AA #mylife #storyofmylife
Like most heroin users, Ory Joe Johnson’s addiction began with a perfectly legal prescription. After a bad car accident in which he broke his nose, jaw, collarbone and ankle, the Wyoming native was prescribed Vicodin for the pain. The meds eventually ran out, but his dependence on them remained. To fuel it, Johnson began dealing drugs, starting with crank (a low-quality powdered form of meth), and as the years passed and his addiction metastasized, eventually moving up to heroin. At the peak of his dealing career, Johnson was funneling drugs to a network of local college students and his reach extended to a constellation of southern Wyoming towns.
The subject of a recent GQ profile, Johnson is now serving nine years in prison for possession and intent to sell. Though he is just one dealer in just one corner of the country, his story has much to say about how heroin is gripping its pale white fingers around the throats of America’s small towns.
To make something clear right off the bat, we are not experiencing a heroin “epidemic.” As the GQ article points out, more Americans huff glue than use the drug, and the total number of users is a tiny fraction of the U.S. population. But for a number of reasons, including high national rates of opiate addiction, rock-bottom prices, corrupt medical professionals, and a surge in supply from Mexico, heroin usage is on the rise. In 2012, some 669,000 Americans reported using heroin in the past year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. That year alone, 156,000 people started using the drug—nearly double the number of people in 2006 (90,000). As the DEA’s regional head for the Midwest put it in an interview with BBC, “Heroin addiction is probably at its all-time high.”
(Source GQ)
It’s impossible to understand the drug’s recent resurgence without looking at the rise of prescription opiates in the 1990s. In “The New Heroin Epidemic,” a terrific investigative piece in the Atlantic, Olga Khazan traces the emergence of blockbuster pain medications like Oxycontin and Percocet. Big Pharma executives waged an aggressive marketing campaign to popularize the drugs, downplaying the risk of addiction, sending thousands of doctors on junkets across the U.S. to learn about the pills and offering sales reps millions in bonuses for convincing doctors to prescribe them. Their efforts succeeded, but with devastating consequences. As the drugs became more widely prescribed, painkiller abuse skyrocketed; the number of deaths caused by prescription painkiller overdose quadrupled between 1999 and 2011. In some states, prescription abuse was facilitated by corrupt doctors who overprescribed, sold prescriptions on the side, and even exchanged the pills for sexual favors.
The Atlantic article uses the case study of West Virginia to explain how prescription pill addiction heralded the current surge in heroin use. A poor state with a high concentration of physically demanding manufacturing and mining jobs and little else in the way of economic opportunity, West Virginia was a ripe target for prescription drug abuse. As Khazan writes, by 2009 residents were annually filling an astonishing average of 19 prescriptions per person. Around this time, medical and state authorities started cracking down, jailing corrupt physicians, establishing databases to prevent patients from getting prescriptions from multiple clinics, and developing pills that were less easy to crush into powder form. Prescription pill use fell. But people were already addicted, and were going to find another outlet. Three out of four new heroin users say they abused prescription painkillers before turning to the drug.
This spike in demand for heroin coincided with a surge in supply. Mexican cartels, which are moving out of the marijuana market as legalization gains a firmer hold in the U.S., are sending cheap, high-quality heroin across the border. As the Washington Post reported, “The amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37 percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states.” Heroin has advantages for both opiate addicts and traffickers. It costs only $10 a pill, compared to $80 for oxycodone, and is easier to transport and conceal than marijuana.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Americans have embraced heroin. But, as every article about the drug’s resurgence points out, the face of heroin use has changed. In the 1960s and ‘70s, heroin took hold in urban centers. “Forty or fifty years ago heroin addicts were overwhelmingly male, disproportionately black, and very young,” according to the Economist. “Most came from poor inner-city neighborhoods.” Today, many heroin users live in suburban and rural areas—places like southern Wyoming and the foothills of West Virginia. Ninety percent of users are white, and more than half are women. It doesn’t take too many logical leaps to understand why the drug’s newfound popularity has been met with so much attention, and why the media is so willing to label it an epidemic.
(Source: The Economist)
This changing user demographic has been met with a shift in official response. “Now that heroin addiction is no longer a disease only of the urban poor, attitudes are changing. The Obama administration’s latest national drug strategy, published in July, criticized ‘the misconception that a substance use-disorder is a personal moral failing rather than a brain disease,’” according to the Economist. They have called for the expansion of needle-sharing services and greater access to naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of heroin overdose.
It’s critical that federal and state authorities expand drug and psychological treatment services for heroin users. Physicians interviewed in the Atlanticarticle say that a combination of drug treatment and talk therapy is the best way to wean people off of its influence. But the areas that are particularly blighted by the drug, like rural West Virginia, are often the least equipped to handle it. They are economically depressed regions with limited access to health services, few job opportunities and bare-bones police departments. Only two-thirds of West Virginians have access to mental-health treatment, and the medical officer for the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration said that only a handful of places in the country have enough providers able to offer drug treatment alongside therapy. This is where we have to focus our energies. Because in the kinds of towns where Ory Joe Johnson was pushing heroin—dusty roadstops of 3,500—addiction is an epidemic.
Maybe you don’t put a steel blade to your wrist, but you constantly guilt yourself over a past that eats you alive.
Maybe you don’t abuse drugs, but you go from toxic relationship to toxic relationship because you weren’t taught any other form of love.
Maybe you don’t pop pills, but you drown yourself with liqour and parties because you’re too afraid to be alone with your thoughts.
Maybe you don’t have a traumatic past, but depression consumes you and you feel it isn’t valid because you’ve “had a good life.”
And maybe you haven’t tried to kill yourself, but you don’t feel alive either.
Self-harm, like abuse, is not just physical. It’s in your thoughts, your lack of action, and things much less visible. Treat your mind as your friend, if you wouldn’t tell your friend that she was worthless, ugly, and messed everything up, catch yourself when you do the same.
My three week holiday ended today. It was a much needed break, and this week I have had several deep and meaningful conversations with my mum.
I told her about my addiction problems and was 100% open and honest about it, and although she had already worked out what I was doing/using a long while back, she was thankful that I had finally come clean.
A massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders and she told me the one thing I needed to hear above all else: That she is proud of me.
fuck the french education system, we’re 1900 ppl in my year 460 will make it into medicine next year
got admitted to the psych ward twice, got stitches
changed treatments and shrinks numerous amounts of times
dude im tired i fail at everything i cant study i cant stay healthy i cant function normally unless im doped up, even then gotta take my anxios or brain go :
