Elected officials, law enforcement, experts in treatment and recovering — and even addicts themselves — have spent much of the last two years working hard to convince people that addiction, and people who are battling it, aren’t lost causes.

County officials have hosted seminars about what people can do if they suspect a loved one is suffering from addiction. Health experts have explained in excruciating detail how drugs like heroin and fentanyl change a person’s brain chemistry and remake them into a facsimile of their former selves. Addicts have been standing up and telling people what it’s like to spiral out of control and lose years of their life to a disease that rips families apart.

All of that is well and good — vital, even — when it comes to convincing people that addicts are worth saving; that they’re not bad people making bad decisions because they don’t care or want to hurt others.

But there’s no stronger advocate for the humanity and redemability of people struggling with addiction than addicts themselves.

And for all the good standing up and telling their stories does, there’s still more they can and should do. There’s an even more powerful way for recovering addicts to show communities that they do care; that they are committed to earning back the trust of their friends, loved ones and neighbors.

If you picked up a copy of the Butler Eagle this weekend, you likely read about a group — Action in Recovery — that’s taking that next step.

Last year the group, the membership of which include many recovering drug and alcohol addicts, kicked off by heading up modest community improvement projects: picking up trash and painting a bridge over Sullivan Run in Rotary Park.

In July, AIR visited Butler’s West End in the wake of widespread flooding, to help clean up neighborhoods swamped with mud. In August, the group hosted a Kids Day and donated sports equipment to more than 200 children.

This year AIR is back again, as a fully-functional nonprofit organization, and founder Jason Beckwith, who is a recovering addict himself, says they have more big plans in the works.

The biggest, Beckwith said, is Camp Success — a youth camp that is set to cater to kids from the Butler area, and teach life skills and resiliency. Organizers hope to expand it into a multiyear event.

The camp and its goal are a fabulous idea — our young people need all the skills and stick-to-it-iveness they can get. But we want to take a moment to highlight the recovering addicts who are giving back to the community.

Recovering addicts — even those like Beckwith, who has told his story numerous times over the past year or more — still face stigma and distrust in many communities around Butler County.

But there’s no better way to disperse those negative feelings than for recovering addicts to get out into their community and show that they care. This isn’t about contritions or repaying a debt; it’s about investing in work to rebuild what’s been eroded as the opioid epidemic has ended lives and fractured communities both here and across the state.

How can anyone look at the work a group like AIR is doing and argue that addicts aren’t worth saving?

Every time recovering addicts step forward and take responsibility for making good things happen in their community, it is a powerful refutation of that argument.

—PAR