Hope for Highland and other local organizations will be holding an Overdose Awareness Day event on Thursday, Aug. 29 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 100 Governor Trimble Place near the courthouse in Hillsboro.
“We have speakers planned – folks who have either experienced overdoses and are in recovery, and we have a family member who is speaking who lost a mother from addiction,” Kim Davis of Hope for Highland and the treatment navigator for the Highland County Probation Department said. “We’re hoping that we have the new QRT [Quick Response Team] that the prosecutor’s office has been working on putting together.
Several local recovery groups and some other local agencies will set up tables to distribute their materials to inform the community about the services they offer.
“We’ve got lots of giveaways – lots of things for folks in recovery to be able to have that have to do with recovery,” Davis said.
She said the event has been going on for about seven years.
“We’re hoping to reach the community to allow those who have lost loved ones to have a place to come together to be with other folks who at least have an understanding of what they are going through because they have lost a loved one or family member,” said Davis. “It’s a way for the community to start working on healing and have that kind of support that they need, and it’s a time for us to stop and just remember, especially with the epidemic that we continue to have every year.”
She said the Highland County Health Department, the Highland County Prevention & Recovery Coalition, REACH for Tomorrow, the Paint Valley ADAMH Board, Alternatives to Violence and The Recovery Council will be part of the event.
“I think that we have periods of time that maybe we kind of go up and down as far as the number of overdoses, but even one overdose is too much,” she said. “It’s to reflect and just remember that every year we’re still close to 100,000 people [in the U.S.] that are dying from a drug-related overdose.”
The event will include Narcan training and giveaways of hygiene bags. “This year we have flags and a banner that we’ll set up for people to be able to write on,” Davis said.
August 31 is National Overdose Awareness Day, but the local event was scheduled prior to that in consideration of the holiday weekend.
Davis said overdoses are preventable, and there is support available.
“There are people who have gone through addiction and are in recovery, and families don’t have to suffer in silence,” she said. “There is a stigma that goes along with having a loved one that is in addiction, and we’re working on continuing to beat the stigma and that shame that comes with it.”
Davis said, “I always want to extend the thanks to our county, our officials, our drug court, and those agencies that fight this battle every day as far as helping get folks in treatment or supporting them by getting them connected to local resources.”
Reach John Hackley at 937-402-2571.
