By David Palmer
In a recent video, Republican Presidential candidate, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, gave the nation a pep talk on the urgent need to deal with the nation’s drug problem. His call to action went viral on Facebook and other social media with six million viewers and counting. In his message, Christie spoke of the impact of the death of a friend who became addicted to the drug, Percocet. “When I sat there at his funeral, and looked across the pew at his three daughters, sobbing because their dad is gone,” Christie said, “I said to myself ‘there but for the grace of God go I. It can happen to anyone. And so we need to start treating people in this country, not jailing them.’” Christie’s comments follow closely the release of Patrick Kennedy’s new book, “A Common Struggle,” which provides a reminder of the high cost of addiction in wasted lives and dollars and the need to respond. It also comes at a time when reports suggest that our steady increase in longevity over the years is at risk because of drug abuse. Drug addicts, according to the World Life Expectancy web site, can expect to live 15 to 20 years from the moment of addiction. So if you are 20, addicted and continue to use drugs, you might live to be 40. The national average is 79.
The solution we are pursuing at One Day at a Time, our non profit company, is to tackle the drug problem at the grass roots in individual communities with a faith based system. It will promote drug free life styles and be governed by a Recovery Roundtable, made up of 12 volunteers, charged with organizing a response guided by the following considerations:
1. It will focus on reducing the demand for alcohol and other drugs by promoting recovery. Law enforcement is responsible for curtailing supply.
2. It will enlist the participation of Christian institutions, primarily evangelical, community-focused and entrepreneurial churches.
3. It will enlist the participation of hospitals and other medical facilities dealing with both mental health and drug addiction problems.
4. It will strongly promote attendance at traditional and proven twelve step meetings, mainly Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and Alanon.
5. It will seek collaborations with other organizations with complementary objectives such as Arkansas Baptist College and City Connections in Little Rock.
Over the years Little Rock has been a leader in promoting recovery. It began with Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in 1940, just five years after AA’s founding in 1935 in Akron, Ohio and developed into a “Little Rock approach plan” for those seeking recovery. And it had the late Joe McQuany who helped integrate AA meetings, developed a curriculum for treatment facilities, wrote books, and held weekly tutorials on the 12 Steps. He was a founder of the Serenity Park treatment facility for both men and women and a cofounder of the Wolfe Street Center, a place for 12 Step meetings.
Little Rock also has Fellowship Bible Church (FBC), an evangelical church founded in 1977 by three young pastors: Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson and Bill Wellons whose growth and influence includes the development of local ministries, “planting” of other churches and the founding of the international Men’s Fraternity.
Mostly, says pastor Mark Henry, FBC is “a church for Little Rock” divinely inspired to “help our city flourish.” In this, he has the enthusiastic support of Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, who speaks of the needs of Arkansans who are hurting, hungry, in prison or in drug houses and his gratitude for FBC’s proactive response in serving these needs. “The government can’t do everything,” Hutchinson has said, adding, “and if it did, it would not do it well.” As we organize our roundtable to undertake the mission of reducing drug addiction in Little Rock, we should be mindful of a major initiative 20 years ago that was full of promise, well funded and creative in some respects but failed in its primary mission of reducing substance abuse.
Little Rock was one of 15 communities in the nation to receive $3 million grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop citywide programs addressing the problem of gangs and drugs. The Foundation called its program “Fighting Back.” Fighting Back produced some interesting insights and some successes in reducing the influence of gangs. But what it did not do was reduce drug abuse, a major target. Much of this is reported by Barbara R. Thompson in her book, “Fighting Back. The first eight years. Mobilizing people and communities in the fight against substance abuse.”
Thompson was an associate of Vanderbilt University psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson (Andy) Spickard, Jr., who was in charge of the national Fighting Back project, and warned at the outset that the project was “not intended to be a social or economic development program. It was a program,” he said, to reduce the use and abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol. By this reasoning, Fighting Back, did not complete its mission, and in my later conversations and correspondence with Dr. Spickard we shared the same belief that a strong spiritual component was missing.
In his book, “Dying for a Drink, Dr Spickard spoke of the importance of faith. He wrote, “I would no more be without my ability to pray for, and with, my patients than I would be without my stethoscope. Prayer and science, I have come to believe are complementary channels of God’s Grace. It is not that one starts up where the other leads off, but that together they are agents of divine healing.”
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