SHARP Stop Heroin and Rescue People: A Workbook for Communities

By Paul Komarek

We have seen far too many heroin deaths. It is time to adapt. This book shows the path to safety.

Disconnected and under-resourced treatment systems actually boost fatal risk. The first part of this book describes what it takes to build safety. The second part of the book is for people and families who must move from the point of active heroin use to the point of safety. The third part is for everyone. It is about creating a positive, safe world, the kind of environment that prevents drug use and sustains recovery.

SHARP Stop Heroin and Rescue People is a consensus-based approach that makes a complex scary problem easy to understand. Written by a social service expert, this book delivers solutions. It's realistic, specific, hopeful, and positive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Church Basement Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311628992

Paul Komarek

Paul Komarek is an author and consultant with a comeback story. After bipolar disorder wiped out his legal career, Paul rebuilt his life around his strengths as a writer, teacher and policy expert. He works on tough social issues, including criminal justice reform, education of children with disabilities, violence prevention, addiction treatment, and health care for the poor.

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SHARP Stop Heroin and Rescue People

By Paul Komarek

Copyright © 2014 Human Intervention LLC

All rights reserved.

Published by Church Basement Press at Smashwords

Also Available

Defying Mental Illness: Finding Recovery with Community Resources and Family Support

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/91891

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

License Notes

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Cincinnati, OH 45223

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A Note on Sources

Portions of this book are adapted from Defying Mental Illness: Finding Recovery with Community Resources and Family Support, by Paul Komarek and Andrea Schroer, 2014 edition.

(C) 2011-2013 Human Intervention LLC. Used by permission.

If we have failed to identify a source, please contact us so we can credit the author properly in future editions of this publication.

Important Disclaimer

This book is intended for general educational purposes only. It does not substitute for individual medical advice from your doctor or legal advice from your lawyer. Please consult your doctor or lawyer for advice on your individual situation.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Part One: Systematic Rescue

Social Infection

Stuck

Death by Disconnection

The Path to Safety

Enrolled in a System

First Aid Available

Safe from Infection

Medicine, Not Street Drugs

Social Support

Rehab

Sober Living

Long-Term Recovery

Responding to Trauma and Shame

Reinforcing Safety

Systematic Rescue

System Status Northern Kentucky

Part Two: Personal Recovery

Find Your Way, Recover Your Life

Part Three: The Positive Safe World

Building Positive Safe Worlds

Appendix One: Addiction Treatment Service Definitions

Appendix Two: Nonclinical Resources

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About Paul Komarek

Church Basement Press

Next Steps

We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.

-- Dorothy Day

Aligning the journey of individual recovery with personal recovery milestones. The system infrastructure supports a seamless path that addresses heroin's fatal risk.

Foreword

A Foreword is meant to be an endorsement of a book as well as the author. For me, both of these come easy.

I became aware of Paul Komarek through an interesting matchmaking forum for do-gooders, the Opinion Page of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Paul had written a one-pager about how to intervene with suicidal individuals, and I had to call. Soon Paul started attending the People Advocating Recovery (PAR) meeting in Northern Kentucky, where the community meets to address our heroin epidemic. He has become one of my go-to guys as we work through this complex issue. That is the type of guy Paul is. He shows up and participates.

Paul's work with us led to this book. The book is a synthesis of what he learned from dozens of experts and hundreds of hours of exploration. Paul's experts are not just the academic sort. They are people who live with the consequences of heroin use, and people who do the work. Paul blends in his own insight. This book speaks to all interested stakeholders, but I suspect it will be most helpful for those for whom addressing addiction is a passion.

In our region, and across America, disconnects within systems meant to protect and serve the community have greatly multiplied the destructive power of heroin. Paul's book changes the equation. It reveals how concerned citizens, both within and outside service systems, can remove barriers and promote recovery through a combination of traditional models and new models where community members take on new responsibilities.

Here is the Cliff Notes version: We now have safe medicines that can substitute for heroin. People who use them do better. Give these people support and you win, and so do they. Read the book. Paul's voice reinforces the total process of transformation, in a positive and strong way.

-- Jeremy Engel, M.D.

Introduction

When people tell me the heroin problem is so big, so tragic, so complicated, I say so what.

So what. We can learn our way through this. If you want to know what humanity can accomplish, drive to the airport. Until about 100 years ago, every human being was stuck on the ground. Every trip to the next freeway exit was a day-long adventure.

Heroin is an epidemic, a health threat. What has kept us from attacking it effectively is a social stance we have taken towards the people who suffer. We face a decision point. We can attack it with all we've got. Our health system and legal system can align their efforts, work together, and solve this. Or we watch more people die.

The homework for this project has made me an expert on trouble. For the past fifteen months I have worked with and met with parents with children caught up in heroin, people who have recovered from drug use, doctors, community leaders, business people, law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, medical records experts, and service system workers. Add that to the work I have done the past fifteen years, developing programs and writing about mental health, violence, suicide, aging, family caregiving, youth services, corrections, diversion, and developmental disabilities. Before that, I worked as a lawyer. And then there's my experience just out of college working for Social Security. Over the course of close to nine years I estimate I talked to 20,000 people looking for help from the government. This was when we were closing our state institutions. Add to all this what I learned from my own mental health recovery, and from my father's alcoholism.

Throughout history, addiction has been treated as a social problem and a crime problem, but seldom as a health problem. It's time to adapt, and respond powerfully to what is happening today.

Our wayward children are dying as addicts. We want to save our sons and daughters. We have learned we cannot make much progress if all we do is shun and imprison people. Today we have medical approaches that bring people back from addiction.

It's a long process, but we can keep people safe, reduce crime, and build motivation. People can and do address their problems, but it takes the right support. It takes systematic rescue.

Healthcare has an open door in every community, with protocols, privacy regulations, security set-ups, connections to regulators, connections to law enforcement, and connections to the broader economy. What might we accomplish if the healthcare system treated addiction and heroin poisoning prevention like every other health concern?

Not everyone is comfortable working with addicted populations. If you can't work on the front lines of treatment and support, you can help hold the medical system accountable. Healthcare systems need a push. They have an obligation to act. Risk is not a factor. Health systems encounter all kinds of risk every day. They already have risk management procedures in place. We see these practices whenever we visit a pharmacy.

Law enforcement has a role to play, but think of it as defense. The people I talk with -- judges, sheriffs, police chiefs, and FBI officials -- all agree that we can't incarcerate our way out of this epidemic. Law enforcement agencies are most effective when they:

-- Target trafficking and violence

-- Work regionally

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