'Stories of Hope' offers support to those struggling with addictions
Hopeful words resounded through the Butler Art Center on Monday.
Butler County's Hope is Dope group, an addiction recovery group organized by Butler County Community College, holds monthly events centered on helping addicts find more productive ways of providing their brains with happiness-inducing chemicals.
Monday evening, the group held a “Stories of Hope” event, where a few recovered addicts in the community took a microphone and talked about their lives after getting clean.
Rachel Shuster of Butler got up and spoke to the crowd. Her story spans from sneaking medical opioids as a nurse to helping other addicts get clean in her current position as a addictions nurse.
Naloxone saved her life once before, and today she carries the drug in her purse in case she encounters someone who needs it.
Shuster spoke at length about the society-imposed difficulties addicts face.
“I don't know why I'm here today except to carry my message and speak out,” Shuster said. “There are people who can't. There are people who face so much stigma and discrimination because of their story.”
She also touched on the mental health problems in her life that contributed to her turning to drugs. For so long, she explained, she had filled her life to the brim with work, education and stress. She neglected regular self-care and spiraled into life struggles.
“Work was awful for me, and I started to deteriorate,” Shuster said.
Today, Shuster is active in trying to help her fellow nurses who face the same easy access to narcotics that aided her addiction.
She's a member of the International Nursing Society on Addictions and is going to be serving on an advisory board for the group.
For Cameron Ham of Butler, Monday's event was cathartic. He spoke at length about how getting sober not only saved his life, but gave him a life worth living.
“Today I'm finally living,” Ham said. “For the first time in my 29 years of existence, I'm finally living.”Looking back on his past, Ham described how odd it was to be able to stand in front of a crowd in an art center and talk about himself in a happy way.In keeping with the idea of the event, he offered words of hope.“It doesn't matter how beat down you are,” Ham said. “You just got to get back up, and then you're good to go.”Hope is Dope is named after a book by Steve Treu, a drug counselor who works with BC3 to design the program. Treu writes about the brain chemistry behind addiction, and the goal of each monthly event is to help addicts in the Butler community find ways to supplant the rush of endorphins supplied by drugs.In addition to speakers like Ham and Shuster, Treu gave a short speech to the crowd. Ken Clowes, a speaker who works as an organizer for Hope is Dope, emceed the evening. The group also brought in Chris Bailey, who walked across the United States six months into his recovery as a vehicle for building his own addiction-free path through life.About 40 people attended the event, including a large contingency of women enrolled in a recovery program at the Gaiser Center.The “Stories of Hope” event was planned for September specifically because it's National Recovery Month.
