 Hello, and welcome to this edition of Quality of Life. I'm your host, Dave Augustine. Today we're gonna be talking about substance abuse as substance abuse is an ongoing growing challenge for our communities nowadays. Joining us today to talk about substance abuse is Kent Cully-Colath from Samaritan's Hand. Cully, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Dave. It's an honor to have you here, especially with today's growing concerns, problems, and epidemic of substance abuse. Yes, sir. So, Cully, could you give us a background of yourself as far as how did you get involved in the substance abuse fight for lack of a better word in your background? Yeah, Dave, it's been a personal struggle for me. I've been in the recovery community for about 40 years, myself, and going through a lot of different organizations and different treatments and correctional things and whatever. Once I dealt with my own issues, then I started to go to school, received Associate's Degree in Substance Abuse Counseling, pursued a Bachelor's Degree in Human Services, and went into a drug and alcohol counseling profession. I worked in Milwaukee County for quite a few years, Washington County and Sheboygan County in various levels of treatment. I was in hospital settings, inpatient, outpatient, private sectors, correctional sectors, and just continued to try to find out what was working and the best approaches. With my own personal experiences and my professional training and education and stuff, I tried to roll that all together to try to get together some information collectively that could help other people. Wow, that's fantastic. Now, Samaritan's Hand, that is a faith-based substance abuse program or facility. Are there many faith-based substance abuse programs around or are you kind of unique on that? Yeah, Dave, we are kind of unique on that. That's a good question. There might be a few other around the country, but it's very limited. In Sheboygan County, we're the only ones that we know of and even quite beyond. And the faith-based part is more of a way of life instead of a different approach. The recovery part of it, it's not religion. It's not denominational. It's more of some life choices and things like that. But yeah, we designed our own program and there isn't anything like us in the area. Wow, that's fantastic. Could you go into a little bit on what the program entails and what Samaritan's Hand is all about? Yeah, thank you. Samaritan's Hand, I founded it in 2011 and it was real small and it's grown in the last five and a half years of existence and we have clinical individual counseling. We have group counseling. We have AODA support meetings. We have Bible studies, a mentorship program. We do some service work for the community and we try to teach our people other ways of life as far as they need to work. They need to be a productive member of a community. They need to support their families and just try to teach them basically like some Christian values as far as the faith-based component goes. Nice. And with the faith-based component, I like what you said it's not denominational or anything. And I think with the center of quality of life on one, I think one's happiness starts with their spirituality and belief or faith in something. And I think that's where really the core starts. Yes, correct. In the counties that you've worked in or the demographics, let's just say in Wisconsin, how would you rate or measure Sheboygan County's substance abuse problems compared to others? I would say Sheboygan County per population, it's second to none in our state and that's substance abuse in general. I guess if you would try to narrow it down to some type of statistics that somebody had of one drug versus the other, somebody else might overlap there or beat us there. But as far as substance abuse in general, we're probably leading per capital and per population. One of those things is when we talk about substance abuse, most people think of like the heroin epidemic and a lot of the pharmaceutical problems and things like that, but a huge part of our culture here in Sheboygan County is alcohol. And that's definitely one of the substances of abuse that we deal with on a daily basis, but still is very dangerous and still causes our community as well as the state and the country, a lot of other problems. Well alcohol, that's probably from in this area, pretty much German descent in this area as far as Sheboygan, a lot of it was German descent and you see the Germans or whatever, October fast beer, everything brats, the whole thing. So what are the main substances that are abused nowadays? Like you said, and we'll get to heroin, but what are the substances that you see real huge issues with? Again, one of our main ones is alcohol. I would say that we have, the majority have an alcohol problem, the people we see, even if that's not their main problem, many of them it is their main problem, but alcohol one being legal and being readily available. Like you said, it's definitely part of our culture here and it's really socially accepted. And people just think that they can excuse people's drinking if somebody smells bad at work or said something wrong or maybe they did something while under the influence of alcohol, that's an excuse because they were under the influence of alcohol. So alcohol is the number one that we see bar none, but there's a lot of pharmaceutical abuse and a lot of that of course was the opiate painkillers, but like you said, we can touch on that a little later, but even like some of the psychotropic medications or any of the other medications that can line of abuse like the amphetamines or other things, if people even if it's their prescription, they're prescribed their medication, they might abuse it or they might get it from friends, family or wherever they can, but pharmaceuticals and then even the illicit street drugs if it's crack cocaine, methamphetamine, cocaine, things like that ecstasy, that's still all out there too, but it just doesn't get the publicity that some of the other ones do like heroin. I know you mentioned alcohol abuse and I think from what you were saying, that's one of the reasons why Sheboygan County is one of the highest things is alcohol abuse because growing up or when you think about substance abuse, you think about the hard drugs and narcotics, stuff out on the street, you really don't think of alcohol once in a while or other things like that or prescription drug, back while there wasn't really an issue with that, it's just a lot of this stuff is now recent or being recognized and we're actually doing something about it. Correct. So as far as alcohol, have we made any progress as far as the abusiveness? I think the best progress we're making in Sheboygan and I'm proud of this community and some of the agencies as well as Samaritan's hand in our county and law enforcement, others is the awareness, we definitely need awareness and people mistake Dave, a lot of alcohol abuse of if you're just drink too much, it doesn't mean that you're falling down, it doesn't mean you ended up in jail or you've gotten a number of drunk drivings or other things, you can abuse alcohol and not have legal consequences or other things so it's the awareness and then the one thing is in our homes and in our culture, we're exposing our children and our community to things like this and then they think it's socially acceptable so the awareness that they're doing in schools, that they're doing on a county level, a law enforcement level, a lot of the other agencies or human services or us is getting out there and even just having the awareness that we really need to be on guard of our alcohol use and even though it was cultural and socially acceptable, we need to be on guard for our families and our community that it doesn't get out of hand. Yeah, growing up high school or whatever, biggest thing was alcohol back then, growing up and everything and now it seems like the tables have turned to more drug use than alcohol. Do you have any ideas of why that may have happened and occurred? I would say that there are still a number of high school kids of course that are always gonna drink and have the parties and whatever but I think a growing number is because of how easily they can get the drugs. Before the drugs probably weren't available and now in a society where if you're not feeling well, if you're anxious, depressed, if you can't sleep, if you have pain, if you whatever, there's so many pharmaceutical drugs out there that the kids are learning of now. They're growing up in a house that's one step short of a pharmacy. So now the things are so readily available that like you said years ago, there was no way that you could get your hands on them or maybe they didn't even exist or on a very low level but now like these farm parties, the kids bring all these different pharmaceuticals and they mix them together and they share and they trade and they do all different things. It's because it is so readily available in our culture. I see that point because back then it was the parents liquor cabinet, now it's the medicine cabinet. Yes, yes, sir. And probably the effects of the pharmaceutical drugs, let's say probably gives them a quicker buzz and probably more of a high and it's probably easier to come down the first few times without the so-called hangover so to speak. Correct and it's a lot easier to put two pills in your pocket than a bottle of whiskey and you can't smell it on kids and if they say they're tired or they might not feel well, it's a lot different than being stumbling, drunk at school or smelling like alcohol or having this bottle of vodka in your backpack and whatever, so the pharmaceuticals are definitely a challenge for our youth. Definitely. Heroin, that seems to be or has boiled up to the top of the popularity, attention type abuse today. Any reason why that is? Yeah, Dave, definitely it's boiled to the top of the abuse. Of course, it started back medications again, medical field, pharmaceuticals, it always derived from the opiate pain medications. We've tracked that back for a long time but that's where a lot of them got started. But two things is heroin is so readily available now and it's so cheap. A lot of people don't even that we're getting hooked on heroin that had started on the narcotic pain medications or whatever, they're even surpassing the medications and just going right to heroin because it is so cheap and it's so easy to get. And another one is why heroin, it's always the buzzword and people talk about it is because of the deaths. Most of the other, if it's the benzodiazepines or the amphetamines or even alcohol or other things, the deaths don't nearly total what heroin deaths do but that's because the heroin, you really don't know what you're getting. It's uncontrolled, like the pharmaceuticals, you know what's there, the alcohol, you know how much you consumed. Heroin, you never know what it's cut with, you might get some bad stuff, like when they're cutting it with fentanyl and a lot of the other things on the street these days and then even a lot of the kids are using, they're turning to the IV drug use for the heroin and they really don't know what they're doing and one, their first experiment, like when they first drank or did pills or whatever, it might have worked out good or not good, they got sick, this might kill them. That's kind of scary along that line and it kind of comes into, like you had said before, involvement with the police agencies, law enforcement, social services, organizations like yourself, I think have to work together because this isn't really a so-called criminal way to treat things to make it better, it's kind of like an epidemic or a disease that we have to work together and what can we do to cure it is what we've got to do and I think our police chief, Chris Damogalski, summed it up real well, when I heard him at the heroin in Wisconsin thing, the traditional throwing them in jail or punishment isn't working. I agree with that, and like you said up in Green Bay, Chief Damogalski, yes, I agree with him 100%. We work well together, I try to work with law enforcement the best we can and we all know, even with Sheriff Preby and other law enforcement, we're not gonna arrest our way out of this program and like you said, the quality of life, I love the name of the program, Dave, is we're just looking for a better quality of life of the individuals, the families, our community as a whole and it isn't a law enforcement problem, it's not a human services problem, it's not a political problem, it's a community problem. The community is the ones that deteriorated and that's how the problem came in and it's gonna take the full community at large, working together, all the associations, all the agencies, every profession and even the family members themselves are all gonna have to fight this epidemic on the front lines to even get this under control. You mentioned community. What demographics do you see is there a commonality or is it all over the board as far as where some abuse occurs? Is it in the age groups? Is it economic? Is it just well-being? I guess, where do you see substance abuse as really hitting our community? Very good question, Dave. At Samaritan, we only deal with adult, the adult population, 18 and over. We know that it hits the schools and the youth pretty hard, but as far as demographics, of course, one thing that we know is if there's been a family that's had a history of abuse, if there's been abused drug dependencies or different types of alcohol or drug abuse by one of the parents or both of the parents or somewhere in there, that their potential from the children or the other members of the family are much higher, but any social, economic, race, ethnicities, genders, age, it's pretty much all over the board. And just as we see some of the guys that have been in prison for drug problems, selling drugs, using drugs or other things, we've seen legitimate, you know, we'll call productive members of our community that are having problems as well. He might have heard us back at work. All of a sudden he got some pain medication or a mother that was lifting laundry or the children or something. And now we're seeing just our regular neighbors, our family members and whatever, that now are in this struggle with the addictive pain medications or even these things where they get hooked on pharmaceuticals. Maybe they needed them for a while. They went through a tough time, a death or a divorce or whatever and they were using some type of prescription drugs, but now they're abusing them. You know, they were there for a time period, but of course goes back to the alcohol, our coping mechanisms, our stressors, our other things and people need to find different ways to deal with things than using drugs or alcohol as the answer to anything. So to answer your question, it's really all over the map, Dave. It's a complete problem. Really, so it's not targeted on one certain area. You know, with that being the case and awareness, care for our community, care for our friends, care for our family. You know, if somebody does have a substance abuse problem, what are some of the warning signs or some of the symptoms that you may see that may indicate there may be a problem, not necessarily that there is, but you know, that there could be a problem. There's always definitely some concerns when the people, when their behavior changes. If they're usually involved in a lot of things, they're outgoing or even if they were quiet and now they're outgoing, but when their behavior changes, a lot of what you see is if they were involved in the family, like say, family activities, if there was holidays that they used to attend all the time or they'd come for lunch at mom's house on Saturdays or whatever else, people start missing things. They start making excuses, maybe a shortage of funds. When they start asking, hey, dad, can I have 50 bucks? When the things aren't getting paid, another one is maybe even their appearance. Now all of a sudden they might look paler or they might look like there's a loss of weight or they're not keeping themselves as well, so it could be financial, it could be their behavior, either showing up places or not showing up places, maybe the people that are around, like how come you haven't been around those friends and you're around these, or like I said, their appearance, a lot of times if things are turning differently, things might not be going well, and the best thing someone can do is if that's your loved one or your friend or you care about them or co-worker, ask the hard questions, ask them, hey, Dave, what's going on? You know, I noticed that you've been late for work a number of times. I noticed that your brother, I noticed you haven't been to mom's for lunch on Saturdays anymore, what's going on? And that's where the community part comes in as far as we need to ask the people the hard questions instead of everybody ignoring everything and keeping to themselves. Okay, again, coming back to community, community well-being and our quality of life, what toll have you seen, substance abuse taking on our communities? You know, how are our communities being affected? Wow, Dave, another great question, thank you, it's, Shiboygan, I grew up here, like I said, and it has affected our community, our community's not even the same. We can really dig into that when we talk to the guys that work at the detention center, our jail and detention center are so overcrowded, they can't fit enough guys in there, or in girls, and even the juveniles. So that's just one part, but that's one thing that says 10 years ago, I mean, there wasn't nearly that problem. And now, and if people say it might not be all drug related, well, if it's domestic violence, or if it's stealing or whatever else, a lot of that goes back to either they were drunk or they're stealing for habits or whatever. So a lot of it is substance abuse related. And going on top of that, if we have to hire more people for the drug unit, we have to spend more money on the jails, even like free and reduced lunches. If the parents aren't paying for their kids' lunches and they're not working and the different types of community things that we're giving, our tax monies going instead of to these roads, or to education or other things, this hits our whole community at large. And a lot of people say, well, my family's not affected or we're, we don't have any problem or any part of that. This affects everyone on a very large scale. With that being said, do we have the tools available to us? The resources are our communities equipped to take on and handle this issue? Straight out, no. The answer is a hard and fast no, Dave. But the thing is, we can't use as an excuse not to move forward. What we need to do is we need to get more people, like you said, an epidemic in this fight. We need to get more people in the battle. The people that wanna volunteer somewhere, wherever it is, if you have family members, get your family members to help. The corporations or the companies or even some of the families that are able, they should be getting involved and they should sponsor some type of drug and alcohol help. They should be helping agencies. They should be sponsoring and donations and other people, if they don't have money, they can be holding events or even awareness or they can have meetings and they can, the whole community at large can all pitch in. And then that's where we're gonna be able to make a difference because right now, we just don't have the hands, we don't have the resources to even touch this, but I believe they're out there if the people will just step up, which I believe that our community can do. Where would one go if they wanna start to, let's say volunteer or if I'm an organization where I wanna help, you need funds to do it or I'm a healthcare institution with the education and everything. How does it all come together? Where can these organizations or people go? Well, of course, I'm gonna put some errands hand in there. They can email us, they can go to our website, they can call our office. We always need volunteers, of course. We can only help as many people that we can afford to help. We're solely raise our own money, we're a small 501-3C, but the more money and the more people or more resources we have, the more people we can help. This isn't a get rich quick scheme. We were, we made the corporation and we have our organization to help individuals, families and the community. That's what it's about. You can also, I'm sure, contact the law enforcement agencies like they have the drug take back days they just had the night out on crime where they have it in the parks and they have the walks and we had the prayer at the pump over by Fulton Park by Ninth and Erie at Hire's BP station and just different awarenesses, even schools. Maybe they wanna do some awareness at schools but you start to contact any different agencies and they can point you in the right direction. Human services but there's probably so many love Inc. There's probably so many agencies that would love to get phone calls of you know what we can only give this much or I only have this much time but we would love to get in this battle against this fight against drug and alcohol and drugs and alcohol in our community and there's probably endless places to serve. Sure, and it comes down to take this on you need unity and in my mind unity that means community and I think some other areas where it could help is you start to see more neighborhood associations being formed as far as that goes which can help in the battle too and I think it's just meant more to help people not to tattle on them or send them away to prison or anything like that. I think it's more of a education is where it starts and it might even be with prescriptions because I know one time I had a really bad cough so I went to the doctor because I couldn't stop coughing so he gave me a prescription for cough medicine. I'm going, cough medicine, okay. Didn't even look at the label, I just took some and I thought, well, I'll take some Nyquil to make me drowsy so I can sleep because I wasn't sleeping. Well, the next thing you know, my wife came home, she said I was snoring talking to her sleeping and watching TV all at the same time and I didn't know which way it was what just to give you what two little simple things did and these are over-the-counter things of how it can affect somebody. So education is a big thing along then with the backup of the programs and other services to help do all this. And as you said, Dave, this isn't about telling on somebody or getting people in trouble, we call it responsible living because if I know that you're using substances, the thing is if I tell somebody or want to get you help, one, it means I care about you enough if you live or die or for your family and that's the other thing is if we don't help the people all of a sudden, we're gonna wish they did because then we might be reading on them about them on page two going to their funeral if somebody didn't say anything. And the responsible living is if these people aren't addressed, they could be selling drugs to our kids, your kids, your grandkids, they could drunk driving accidents, what about they go to one of these employers? The employers go, he goes in paired, he goes into work or whatever and does something. Yeah, maybe because he was under the influence but it's still not gonna do very well for the employees or the business or whatever else. So the responsible living of confronting people and like you said, asking, seeing where people need help and that's the merit in his hand. Yeah, we'd love to help the people we know that we're not the cure, we're not the one and only. If people don't like our approach, the faith based approach, I say we'll get help somewhere. And if you don't get help from us or get help wherever else and you go somewhere and you don't like the way they do it or you don't like me or you don't like whatever else, go somewhere else. But what I always say is go somewhere, get the help you need, get your loved ones to help you need because something's gonna work if something continues to not work, the motivation for the person that has the issue, they might not be motivated for the help, it just might be excuses. That's what we find most of the time, but just keep looking around. There's all different types of agencies and treatments and if you don't have even money for that, I mean, we'll help you with no money at all. Sure. And I think right now it looks like this huge title wave coming at us. Of this problem and number one, we have to look at getting over the title wave that we can handle that initial surge, but then also to go on to continue the thing as well. So Cully, thank you very much for being on the show. I think this was a great show, very informative. For quality of life and on behalf of Cully from Samaritan's Hand, I wanna thank you for being on the show. Any other questions about the show or other topics you can email us at wscashboygan.gov. For Quality of Life, I'm Dave Augustine. Thank you for watching.