Raising Awareness About Addiction and Recovery – How One Community Did It
Raising awareness about addiction and recovery – Massac County Drug Awareness Coalition in Metropolis, Illinois, saw a need and filled it. Last Saturday, the Coalition partnered with Heroes in Recovery and the Metropolis Public Library to gather donated books from addiction and recovery book authors to stock a “Recovery Shelf” at the library, read to children, answer questions posed by adults following their speaker’s presentation and provide a guest speaker targeting teens. Susanne Johnson, guest author of this post, shares the story and photos of this community event.
“Fire Up Your Future” – Awareness Event About Addiction and Recovery
As a Lead Advocate for Heroes in Recovery, I am also a member of the Massac County Drug Awareness Coalition. We discovered that our library needed more recovery related books to make education in this field accessible to the general public, raise awareness and to break the stigma associated with addiction and mental health. Several books were purchased for the library and also a Kindle Fire, which was the main prize in the raffle between all attendees at the end of this beautiful hour in the name of awareness.
Heroes in Recovery is a movement ignited by Foundations Recovery Network and the widespread community of those who are in recovery from addiction and co-occurring disorders. Heroes in Recovery has a simple mission: to eliminate the social stigma that keeps individuals with addiction and mental health issues from seeking help, to share stories of recovery for the purpose of encouragement and inspiration, and to create and engaged sober community that empowers people to get involved, give back, and live healthy, active lives. I am a Lead Advocate for Heroes in Recovery since the beginning of 2013 and love to create or help in events raising awareness and encourage people to achieve sobriety. You find more information about the movement at our webpage, Heroes In Recovery.
Many authors of all kinds of recovery related books, that I knew privately, were immediately jumping to support this event by sending one, two or even more books to me, some of them original autographed. The first book went after the event as a donation to the library, additional books were raffled off at the end of the event to the adult attendees. ‘Heroes in Recovery’ Awareness Material and Drug Publications by NIDA were spread throughout the library on tables for everybody to take.
We placed all attendees into age specified groups in different corners or rooms within the library. The adults had a speaker about drugs, addiction, awareness and recovery. Teenagers were listening to a different speaker about making positive choices in life. This speaker is a survivor of a dramatic car crash with fatalities, where drunk driving was the issue, and the youngest participants listened anxiously to our Chief of Police, Harry Masse, and our County Sheriff, Ted Holder, reading them selected books like, Pirates Have Feelings Too by Foundations Recovery Network. Ted Holder was also giving away ‘Sheriff Willy Bear’, little stuffed bears to the kids. We are very proud here in Massac County about the countless efforts of our Sheriff’s Department and the Police of Metropolis, IL, working as a team together in drug prevention, education and their support of recovery.
Books donated to Metropolis Public Library as part of the Heroes in Recovery and MAASC County Drug Awareness Coalition’s event to raise awareness about addiction and recovery.
The event was a great success, our coalition MCDAC, Heroes in Recovery, the Metropolis library and I want to thank everybody for coming and making this such an enjoyable time while spreading the word about recovery. The director of the coalition, Natalie Quint of Massac County Mental Health, organized a wonderful event. Our thanks are to all the volunteers, speakers and readers as well, and my personal special gratitude belongs to all those authors, whose selected books are in the picture, who made it possible, that a small county library is today well stocked with information for concerned people, family members and addicts themselves. I would like to encourage everybody to do this event in their town / county. It does not require too much preparation work and is worth every single minute. If you have questions, need Heroes in Recovery material or anything else for your event, feel free to contact me. Please help those that feel helpless and copy this event in your community. We would appreciate, if you let us know about your event and send us photos about it. Together we have a voice that should be heard. Recovery is possible.
If you are interested in my personal story of recovery or you want to find out more about the Heroes in Recovery movement, you find it here, and if you would be interested to share your story on the Heroes in Recovery webpage, please contact me by email, susuegypt@hotmail.com, or Facebook and I will guide you through the process.
Many thanks to the authors that freely participated in giving me their books for the event: Dan Forkell, Scott Stevens, Noah benShea, Sherry Gaba, Lisa Frederiksen, Beverly Berg, Taite Adams, Brad Lamm, Dan Griffin and Anna McKenzie. I really appreciate your selfless support.
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What a fabulous idea! While many people buy their books from brick-and-mortar stores or for electronic reading, I’m a huge proponent of community libraries. What a way to galvanize a community around the issue of addiction and recovery, and quite possibly, childhood prevention. Wow–if children’s books were gathered, the library could host a family event around reading a discussing a book.
Tremendously cool! Thank you, Susanne and Lisa, for such valuable information.
Hello Beth,
thank you very much for your nice comment. We sure were very happy with the event and hope our community will continue to grow together instead of media taking social life apart. I believe, that education has a key role in addiction prevention and that ‘sometimes it needs a village’ to grab hold of a growing problem. The Massac County Drug Awareness Coalition is a perfect example how a small amount of volunteers with very little funds can make a huge difference in Drug Addiction on a local level. Heroes in Recovery gives me the opportunity for nationwide awareness, where all organizations can combine under one roof for the same goal and work together, please join us, together we are strong. Feel free to do similar events and contact me if you have questions. Awareness, Prevention and Help, this event did service it all.
Susanne Johnson