My mom who had been a long time ALANON sponsor for many and had a sponsor herself, was broken by it as well. At the time, we did NOT have a dementia diagnosis, so the terror and the trauma I faced in this moment was significant and will never leave me. I attempted to intervene, and despite my pleas to give me his keys, he drove off drunk, in plain sight of our entire family – and we were helpless to do anything about it. And possibly the worst of it was a visit in 2016, he was at our family’s annual picnic and drinking heavily. My dad went to jail countless times for driving under the influence, banned from Costco for life for openly drinking wine, unpaid for, in the aisles. Once you have witnessed someone you love out of control and unable to stop, you realize how terrifying the brain is and the toll the disease of addiction takes on people. So, I preface this story by saying that he COULD NOT stop himself. Which for him was the compulsion to drink alcohol. My dad has behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, and one of the symptoms of that is compulsion. And what has all that lead to? Sadly, estrangement.Īnd now I’ll share one of my saddest and worst stories in the hopes of growing awareness and destigmatizing substance use disorder. Others in my immediate family have struggled and I have participated in interventions, scary late night calls, and fighting, crying, begging, and pleading for them to get help. It was all done socially, right? That's ok, right? Because I could keep it together, I never really thought I had a problem. My teen and college years in the mid-80s and early 90s included a lot of binge drinking and bad judgement. ![]() The association of alcohol=good time was deeply established in my mind. Weekends on our sailboat always included a lot of box wine and cases of beer. He was bringing home beer every night in his Little Playmate cooler when he was working at the Henry Weinhardt brewery on Burnside and they were allowed to fill up straight from the tap, filling up any container they brought. I remember my mom telling my dad it was counseling or else in 1980. There he sat at the end of the line, in his rough brown robe, I didn’t understand why we were visiting him there, I was just told he was “sick and getting better”. In the 70s I can vividly remember following a colored line down a winding corridor at the old Veterans Hospital in Vancouver with my parents to visit my grandpa. We NEVER talked of it openly, but it was very clear to me that it was having a huge negative impact on our lives. Some of my earliest childhood memories were related to substance abuse. I have witnessed the devastation of addiction in my family and want to break the cycle, providing my children with an example of how to end the strong generational and genetic predisposition of substance use disorder, and talk OPENLY and without SHAME of what it means to seek help for care and why we must encourage one another and celebrate recovery. For me personally, it really began with my decision in the Spring of 2018 to stop drinking and commit to a zero-proof life. I walk for recovery for many people and many reasons. I can tell you firsthand how difficult it is to navigate through recovery as an Oregonian - and I had insurance.- Oregon ranks LAST in the nation in addiction treatment accessibility- Oregon is 2ND in the nation of untreated addiction cases- Oregon loses 5 people each day to alcohol-related deaths 1 person daily to drug overdose- Oregon spends 17% of our state budget on the consequences of alcohol - and less than 1% on treatment and preventionPlease join me as I raise awareness around our current situation and address it through this fundraiser.If you find yourself consuming alcohol or drugs when you do not want/desire either, you are always welcome to reach out to me for support, resources, and/or next steps.Thank you for supporting me!Jenn I, myself, have been through intensive outpatient and outpatient programs for 8 months at Hazelden Betty Ford as well as My Sober Girlfriends, The Luckiest Club, Sober Powered, and Tempest. Oregon Recovers is dedicated to centralizing and easing access to treatment for Oregonians. ![]() ![]() I have since learned about Oregon’s addiction epidemic and our lack of resources around it. ![]() In celebration of my second year sober, I am participating in Oregon Recovery’s Walk for Recovery in Pendleton on October 15th.
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