I am posting a publisher’s opinion from the Arctic Sounder, a rural Alaska Weekly newspaper. Editor Carey Restino discusses an effort by Recover Alaska to collect success stories about recovery from alcohol addiction. In her article, Ms. Restino addresses the very high rates of addiction in rural Alaska, and our need to address it. She is absolutely right, and I commend her for writing about it.
When I returned to Alaska in 1978, my first public service volunteer activity was serving on the board of Bean’s Cafe, a non-profit that provided meals and a warm place to hang out for the homeless in Anchorage. I met some amazingly caring people during my service on the board. And the people we served were genuine, engaging and all had stories to share. Unfortunately, most people could not look through their appearance and they didn’t have a chance to share their story. I just wanted to do some good back in the day, and I believe Bean’s Cafe did that. As I write this at a Starbucks on Dimond Boulevard in Anchorage, I am reminded of the donations coming in from restaurants in Anchorage that allowed us to “reuse” their coffee grounds for our patrons. Small kindnesses mean a lot, and we had some of the kindest board members and staff you could ever meet.
Alaska has a lot of alcohol issues. And we use “best practices” to address them. There are never enough recovery beds for 30-day, or the rare 90-day, programs. In my experience, many with alcohol issues may return to recovery multiple times before finding success, if they ever do. I agree that we need to hold out hope that individuals can overcome addictions. I applaud the work of Recover Alaska, the young people who are leading it, and Ms. Restino for helping shine a light on the problem, especially a light that uses data.
Ms. Restino makes two points that I would like to address. First, she writes about many other issues that Alaskans face, including domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, seasonal depression and alcoholism. She adds opioid use to the list as the latest scourge. Second, she looks at some reasons to blame, including boredom, poverty, past hardships, cultural acceptance and others. She then talks about the bottom line, results in changing the paradigm.
My contribution to the conversation since 2008 is sharing the ACE Study, and building a trauma-informed state. It can be done. I have reached out to the media because of the importance of spreading the underlying knowledge about childhood trauma and its impact on negative behaviors.
I draw inspiration from what the State of Oregon is doing. Readers of ACEsConnection.com may recall a story about a job announcement for a position with Multnomah County’s Health Department for a senior trauma specialist. I did some research on how Multnomah County is becoming trauma -informed and found some interesting developments. Trauma Informed Oregon is a collaboration “…of university, public and private partners, individuals with lived experience, youth and family members that are committed to creating and sustaining a trauma informed system of care in Oregon.” Oregon Health and Science University and Portland State University are two of the collaborators, so academia is engaged in the spread of knowledge.
Alaska does not yet have a similar collaborative, nor are its universities engaged in research of dissemination of childhood trauma issues. We are working on that. The Oregon Pediatric Society is engaged in childhood trauma issues, as is the Alaska Chapter of the Academy of Pediatrics. And there are pockets of experimentation in Oregon on how to deliver trauma-informed services.
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