I sat in a room earlier this year with twenty other alcoholics and drug addicts. We were trying to add up what our addiction had cost us, our families and the general public. The figures we came up with just from our little group were exponentially greater than I had first supposed. For example: 20 people racking up 1 year each of missed work ($416,000), 20 people averaging 20 days jail and 5 court dates ($100,000), or even just the funds we stole for or diverted to illicit drug purchases ($?$?$?)! Now that’s over a half million dollars for 20 people that meet at a medically assisted recovery clinic that has over 500 patients serving just one county in Alabama. Now before you start figuring the costs of the other 480, try to wrap your head around the collateral damage caused by addiction that includes neglect, abuse, infidelity, health issues, bankruptcy, truancy, and crime to name just a few. Looking at this issue from my perspective, the cost of substance abuse to our community is astronomical.
Bill Layfield, a senior representative of Faces and Voices of Recovery, will also sit in a room tomorrow, but he will be meeting with Alabama Senator Richard Shelby tomorrow in an effort to restore $2.5 million that has been cut from the Recovery Community Services Program (RCSP) of the 2008 federal budget. The RCSP supports “organizations that provide services and enable peers in stable recovery to help others avoid relapse and move into long-term recovery” and plays a large role in the hosting of the annual National Recovery Month. I know Mr. Layfield; he is an old pro when it comes to recovery issues. I think he will get the good senator see this issue from his perspective, one from which protecting or even increasing RCSP funding is an easy choice and a sound investment in prevention against the astronomical costs of substance abuse to our communities.
You can help Bill and all of us in this effort; I’ll make it easy for you. Click here and just enter you zip code to get a preformatted letter to send to your senators and representative with just the click of a button telling them to restore full funding to RCSP. When you add up the costs of substance abuse in our communities, cutting the funds to these programs just doesn’t make sense. Your E-mail can make a difference.
