BC3's 'New Eyes' offers look at opioid issue
BUTLER TWP — Butler County Community College is offering a spirituality-based program for people struggling with opioid addiction and working toward recovery.
The “New Eyes: A Unifying Vision of Science and Spirituality” program will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays, Oct. 2 through Dec. 18, in Room 110 of the Science and Technology Building on BC3’s main campus.
New Eyes follows BC3’s “Hope is Dope: Achieving Chemical Balance” four-class program that was held in April and June.
Both programs are part of the school’s “Reset your Brain: A Revolutionary Approach to Opioid Addiction & Recovery” initiative, which is aimed a achieving an objective in the schools 2017-2022 strategic plan to focus on quality of life issues.
The programs are based on “Hope is Dope: Achieving Chemical Balance” and “New Eyes: A Unifying Vision of Science & Spirituality” books written by Steve Treu, a licensed therapist with Quantum Revolution Counseling who teaches the classes.
Among the 70 people who took the Hope is Dope class was Ken Clowes of Butler, a recovering heroin addict who now serves on the 10-member Reset your Brain advisory team and works as a support staff supervisor at a Butler County men’s halfway house.
Clowes, 38, said he once used as much as $200 worth of heroin a day “just to feel normal.”
“Hope is about our bodies while New Eyes is about our souls. Hope is the starting pitcher while New Eyes is the closer,” Clowes said.
Treu, the course instructor, said the goal of New Eyes is to teach people to “recognize that a natural high is possible and, indeed, preferable to the artificial high that one gets from using drugs, but it requires a lot of work on the inner world of mind and soul, something that all of the major spiritual traditions teach as well.
“To unleash the hidden treasure of endorphins inside yourself, you must go on an inner journey of self-discovery about the true nature of who you are, why you are where you are and where you need to go,” he said.
The New Eyes program merges “complex quantum physics and the major religions into one simple concept — that you are an energy being having a physical experience” and explains the concept in layman’s terms, Treu said.
Clowes said BC3’s Reset your Brain initiative is a new approach to understanding addiction.
“They are offering a fresh perspective on what this is. Unless you have been an addict or are in recovery, or you work with this directly, a large part of the public is unaware of what is happening inside the minds of addicts,” Clowes said. “And we believe with the proper education and a proper perspective on this, more people will be able to help with the opioid crisis.”
He said he used heroin sporadically over a 10-year period to battle depression and anxiety, but he will have been clean for four years Dec. 21.
Hope is Dope is intended to help people achieve neurochemical balance through ordinary, everyday events — that balance is what addicts attempt to achieve by using opioids, Clowes said.
Another session of Hope is Dope will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Mondays, Oct. 29 through Nov. 19, at the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources, 127 S. Main St.
