ADDICTION UNCOVERED
Resiliency and Prevention
Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered Ch 42
Why it is so hard to change?
What we can try to do to help break the cycle or support people?
How to become a resilient person?
Resiliency building is a great tool to gain an understanding of ourselves and better our minds, develop essential skills to survive and say no to destructive things, and nourish our souls. It has been shown in the research that resiliency skills are very beneficial and preventative, helping us manages stress and cope with things in our lives.
Edward thinks building resiliency would help, absolutely, but not sure what would that look like. We were having a conversation about a little town where there are a lot of shops and restaurants and bars serving alcohol and it can be difficult to find entertainment without alcohol being available. Resiliency training can help to create behaviors that are positive and helpful to our lives, increase caring toward others, motivation, team building and help to work through feelings. Listen better, assume positive intent, trying not to take things personally, and focus on things that the body and mental health need to stay a focused healthy individual.
Show caring and love toward others.
Sheila thinks that building resiliency would create less likelihood for people to become addicted. Coping skills might help. Beth felt like she did not know that addiction was a disease until her husband went into treatment. Beth describes resiliency building as stopping a cycle and talking to our children about addiction in a way they can understand. Teaching coping skills, education.
She feels that education is the key to the prevention of addiction.
This is very challenging in today’s society. In the discussion, it came up that if she even did not know that this was a disease and she is a nurse; she is educated how about others do they know? How about our children?
Angel felt that resilience-building needs to start when children are very young and develop their social and emotional skills. The beginning of it is having a conversation and sharing our own experiences. Kayla describes resiliency as connection, involvement, equity, and inclusiveness in the community. Make sure that everyone is included. Talk to people, be there for people. Building relationships with people, having genuine conversations with each other in person, not with social media.
Rory felt that other cultures like northern European cultures are more connected to each other than Americans. He describes Portugal doing some amazing work in addictions. It is worth looking up Portugal’s national strategy. They have different options that might work to fight addictions. Rory feels like the only reason we don’t do this in our county is that no one had figured out how to make money out of it. All of it is tied to money Rory emphasized. In his mind, this is what kills people.
Joel felt that we have to create resiliency with each other who are doing the hard work to try to help people and communities dealing with addictions. It is very hard work she asserts with not much reward and emotionally draining. Providing fair pay would be a start for the extremely hard work. Educating and teaching people is hard, and supporting chronic health problems is hard. Janett feels that resiliency and supporting communities to be more resilient would be helpful. More resources in the schools for kids especially those who are going through a hard time.
Albert feels like we could do things for prevention he describes the DARE program they had in school, which was pretty much just don’t use drugs, he felt it was not helpful. Some of it was good as education on why not to do drugs, but he feels it was not enough. Albert thinks mental health issues need to be addressed, having social workers in the schools.
Who can look at what is going on in a kid’s family, why is this kid at higher risk of addiction and mental health issues, are the parents are addicted?
He feels it is all tied together. Just saying drugs are bad does not solve anything. More prevention would be helpful he said and earlier intervention, more education, more support for kids in schools. In schools, there are a lot of opportunities to identify kids who are struggling and figure out what can be done to help that child now rather than wait until they are 22 and getting arrested or wait until they are overdosing.
Thank you for reading,
Gabriella
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This book is dedicated to the memory of Bagóczky József my uncle who died at age 19 — alcohol-related car accident and to everyone else who has been hurt or lost related to addiction
Many people had been supportive and inspiring to me so I could create this book. Both of my wonderful children told me, just write that book, mom. My mom. I could have not done this without all the stories provided and the encouragement love and caring from my family and friends, nurses, doctors, counselors, teachers, professors, friends who are dealing with addiction and staying sober; and children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers of people who are dealing with addiction currently. Thank you for speaking up, sharing your stories and life experiences. Thank you to all the people who read this book while in progress to provide feedback, ideas, and encouragement for me to continue writing. I would like to say special thanks to my friends and family for believing me and encouraging me to go on.
Our Society: Addiction and More Uncovered. Hear the voices of everyday people — a collection of stories and experiences.
Copyright @ 2020. 1st addition on Amazon KDP. 2nd addition Jan 2021 Barnes & Noble. Gumroad December 2021. By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi. All rights reserved. Dancing Elephants Press.
