 So opioid overdoses are increasing as a problem in the Muslim community and this is happening all over the United States. So our organization, we're basically rooted in Chicago land in the Bay Area, but we hear reports about opioid overdose deaths in the Muslim community, New York, Chicago land, Michigan, Ohio Bay Area we're hearing in the Muslim community. These problems happening and it's good Muslims, good Muslim families, good Muslim people. It's just people that are getting off track and what could have been a problem that they could have learned from and grown from ends up becoming something that just gets worse and we do see this. We do see Muslims that get off track and then acknowledge the problem and get treatment and they reach a potential that they could have possibly not reached had they not had this problem. So in a lot of ways addiction in some ways is like a gift. It's like a incredible learning opportunity that takes people to a level in terms of their development that they may not have had had they not had the addiction in terms of being upright people in the community, their character, some of the most amazing people I've met. But you know that requires them acknowledging the problem and then getting the proper advice and applying themselves to that proper advice to really gain traction on that problem. Now we're in the midst of an opioid crisis and I know we've heard that in the news and it's something that we hear but somehow sort of disconnect from in the sense that oh that's happening over there. The opioid crisis is happening over there but oftentimes what we're seeing is it's happening in our communities. If somebody with an opioid addiction you may pass them in Juma on a weekly basis and it's happening within our families and in our communities. So what is the opioid crisis and how did it start? So for example the opioid crisis started the story goes with increased prescribing of opioids by physicians. So physicians started prescribing more opioids because they were reassured about its safety and that it wasn't addictive. And so increased prescribing of opioids flooded the nation and that led to addiction because the although the addictive potential was understated it ended up being more significant as to what we know now. Then prescription opioids were sort of reduced. People stopped prescribing them. People started to transition to other opioids like heroin and stronger opioids. Now it's been declared a public health emergency. So the opioid crisis has been declared a public health emergency. The question is what's a public health emergency? Like if you look at COVID, COVID is a good example of a public health emergency. It wasn't considered a public health emergency when deaths weren't significant enough. Once it started to increase, once it started to really spread fast and become deadly, that's when it transitioned into becoming a public health emergency. And that's simply because we needed to warn people about it. We needed to have people take precautions about it. We needed to have people who are vulnerable to COVID know that they needed to take extra precautions. People couldn't interact in the same way. We needed to monitor our children's more, children more and our loved ones more. People would come back from school. We'd have to check in with them, make sure they didn't have a fever. Similarly with the opioid epidemic, it wasn't always a public health crisis. It was declared a public health emergency once the deaths started to really add up, once it started to become such a widespread issue that we all needed to be aware of it. People who are vulnerable to addiction, people who could be harmed by it. And it's so widespread now. And the death rates are increasing every year. Opiate overdose deaths are increasing every year. And now it's more likely to die from an opioid overdose death than car crashes or from suicide. Opiate overdose deaths have surpassed these issues. So, okay, so the Muslim community is an immune to these problems. So just like the COVID crisis, we go out, Muslims aren't immune to COVID. The Muslim community is not immune to the opioid epidemic problem also. So, that's something to keep in mind. And why wouldn't it be? We have comparable rates of divorce. We have comparable rates of mental health problems, suicide. And so this is an issue in our community as well. And what's important to recognize is we can acknowledge this without it necessarily being a blemish on Islam. So just because we have these issues in our community doesn't mean it's necessarily a defect in Islam. It's like if you're in a dark room and it's daylight outside. If you're in a dark room and it's daylight outside, that doesn't mean there's a defect in the sun. It means there's something going on in the room. So you just open up the shades, let more light in. These problems that we're facing in our community doesn't necessarily mean it's a defect in Islam. It could simply just be a signal that we need to let more in. And the point is, the point being that spirituality is an important part in the process of recovery from addiction, from opioid addiction. Studies repeatedly show that spirituality and religious participation prevent against addiction. And then also spirituality integrating it into the recovery process after addiction occurs, after people get out of treatment, has been shown to really improve success rates. The most consistent outcome is that people with higher levels of spirituality, people with higher measures of spirituality, have more days of abstinence after treatment than people with lower levels of spirituality. Point being, spirituality is a part of the problem. But if Islam is sort of locking it in place and we're not becoming aware of where we need to apply it, then we're not going to be able to take full advantage of applying that spirituality to the people who need it the most. Okay, so we're seeing increasing opioid overdose deaths in our work at, in our organization as well, Medina House. So Medina House is basically a group of Muslims who've come together who have a, have lived through addiction in some form or the other, whether recovering from addiction or whether living through a family member's addiction. And it's a group of Muslims focusing on addressing the addiction epidemic in Muslim communities and in underserved communities. And the second point about us is that spirituality has been shown, spirituality was very important in our lives to heal from the process. And we've opened a recovery home recently in the Bay Area in Richmond. And we have a recovery home in Chicagoland as well. And we do programs in both of these areas. But we're hearing increasing reports all across the United States about opioid overdose deaths. So this allows us to talk to the communities. And this allows us to see the common pitfalls that Muslims are facing when try to solve this problem. So this allows us to really see patterns in the issues, patterns in the community, pitfalls of where people are making common mistakes. So that's what we want to share for the rest of the talk. So basically, let's talk about it from the perspective of treating addiction. So from the perspective of treating addiction, we can look at the right way to do it. And then we can talk about simply what are some of the pitfalls that we're seeing. So when we think about addiction, we can conceptualize it as affecting the body, the mind, and the soul. So it starts off with, there's different stages for the recovery process. And each stage has a different part that's more emphasized. So in the beginning stage, the body's the main issue, just treating the withdrawal from opioids. In the second stage, the mind is the issue. And the third stage, the soul's issue, or just lifestyle, solidifying lifestyle change. Now, it's like baking a cake. It has to happen. Every treatment has to happen at the right stage. So the body stage, there has to be the right treatment. If we focus on too much on treating the soul at the body stage, we're not going to get traction. If we focus too much on treating the soul at the body stage or the body at the soul stage, we're really not going to get traction. It's like baking a cake, like I mentioned. So when you bake a cake, you've got to mix the ingredients. You've got to put it in a cake pan. And then you put it in the oven and let it bake. If you change the order of that in any way, it's not going to work. So for example, if I don't mix the ingredients, put it in the oven, that's not going to work. That's going to be a cake that doesn't taste good. So everything in its due stage. So for example, the body stage. In the body stage, the most important thing to think about is managing withdrawal. So what is withdrawal? So when people take opioids, they become intoxicated. So what does intoxication look like? Intoxication looks like people will be drowsy, slurred speech. Oftentimes you'll see them nod off when they're using opioids. This is a question that we get often. How do I know if my loved one is addicted to opioids or using opioids? Oftentimes they'll sort of like nod off mid-sentence. So they'll be talking and then they'll kind of nod off or they'll be in the middle of eating. And then they're eating something with the fork. And then they sort of, before the food gets to their mouth, they sort of nod off and drop the fork. So that's how intoxication looks with opioids. The withdrawal is the opposite of that. So with withdrawal, what you see is people will be anxious, won't be able to sleep, will be irritable, they'll be restless. Oftentimes you'll see restless leg. And that's how withdrawal looks. This is a huge barrier for people to then get into treatment. This is a huge barrier for people to then get into treatment. Just the idea of having to go into withdrawal prevents people from taking that step. So the most important part at this phase is basically treating the withdrawal. And medications are important at this phase. So for example buprenorphine and other medications have been shown to be helpful at completely relieving opioid withdrawal at this phase. So these medications are an important step. And then not only for treating the discomfort of withdrawal and making it easier to start the recovery process, but it's just been shown to reduce overdose debt. And that's the most important piece I would stress. These medications for opioid addiction have been shown to reduce overdose debt. One study looked at 50,000 people and found that the people that took the medication versus the people that didn't take the medication, the likelihood of death was reduced by 80%. So taking these medications are incredibly important. And this again is from the perspective of just preserving life and protecting life. So from the perspective of protecting life, these medications are incredibly important. Not necessarily just from the perspective of protecting the intellect or from reducing withdrawal symptoms to make yourself comfortable from the perspective of protecting life. And the common strategy is not to just simply use it through withdrawal, but to use it through all the phases. Typically people are on this for a period of time. And this should be discussed between that person and their physician. But this could be on the order of months. And really that's an individual discussion that needs to happen between patient and physician. And so that's that. So the one thing to keep in mind about withdrawal is that when withdrawal happens, you definitely want to overcome it. Then there's a separate issue of chronic pain. So with chronic pain, sometimes people will start to get off of opioids and they'll develop chronic pain. And that'll be the barrier for them to get off of opioids. So instead of coming off of opioids and having to deal with withdrawal, they get off of opioids and they have to deal with really severe pain. Because opioids treat pain and many people start on their journey to opioids due to pain. So they get prescribed a prescription opioid, then their pain gets out of control. But then the opioids go up and then the pain's less of an issue. And then they start using opioids for both pain and then also to treat this other emotional issue that happened to be going on at that time. And then all of a sudden, slowly and insidiously, they start using opioids simply for the pain. I'm sorry, for the emotional pain. And then that gets out of hand. And then they develop addiction. So when people want to get off of opioids, they have to deal with the withdrawal. But then they have to address the very real problem of how do I treat this pain? How do I treat this chronic pain? So when they treat the chronic pain, you know, you can't just treat the withdrawal without treating the chronic pain. And you can't just treat the pain and not treat the withdrawal. Both things need to be treated at the same time. And again, medications are important for that. There's medications that both treat withdrawal and treat the pain in order to get off. Okay. So that's the body phase. Once you finish with the body phase, then the and the body stabilized, then you have to address the mind. So the mind will start to have these compulsive drive to use opioids. The mind will start to have this compulsive drive to use opioids. So just like the body's shaky, then the mind is shaky as well. And so and just like the body will drive you use opioids, the mind will drive you to use opioids. It'll constantly be preoccupied with opioids, constantly be thinking about opioids, so on and so forth. So what's important at this stage is to people need an intense training process in order to get off of opioids, in order to stabilize the mind and in order to to deal with the problem on the level of the mind. And that's best happening at a rehab. That can best happen at a rehab, a residential program or an intensive outpatient program. And so what a rehab offers is a place for people to get away from their environment and focus on that intensive training in order to stabilize their mind, learn tools to reduce their cravings, and then stabilize their emotions as well. So an rehab can be at the residential level of care. It can be at the intensive outpatient level of care. It can be at the outpatient level of care. And it's important to engage in that part. And so, you know, if you focus on the body at this stage, I'm sorry, if you focus on the mind stage, when it's the stage for the body, you won't get traction. You may not get as successful results. If you focus on the soul phase at the phase of the mind, you might not get that much traction. You might not get that much results. And then also we have a brother, Imam Zabi and Molana Suleiman, starting a residential program in our community, a rehab for Muslims in our community in the Bay Area. And it's an absolute worthwhile cause. And people should absolutely support this cause, invest in this cause. And they're working with investors at the moment as well. So, inshallah, you can speak with them, and I actually encourage you to. And then we come to the soul phase. The soul phase is once the body stabilizes and the mind stabilizes, then we have to deal with solidifying this change. So then we solidify the change by just continuing to do this work over and over again. So recovery skills work and all the tools that we have learned in the previous stages, we want to just rinse and repeat and continue to do this work. So the first two phases are very hard. You do a lot of work in order to get that to that place. And then this phase is a phase where you just want to solidify it. So if you go back to the baking the cake example, you want to, you know, you've gotten all your ingredients, you've created a cake, you put it in formation, and then, you know, it looks like a cake. It might even taste like a cake, smell like a cake, but right when you take it out of formation, it's just going to fall apart. So it really needs to happen at this phase is that just giving it some time and putting it in the right environment. If you give it the right time and just put it in the right environment, just over time people's habits will start to solidify. This takes time. So changing habits takes time. It's not going to happen in a matter of days or weeks. This happens in the course of months. So creating new pathways in the brain takes time and it just takes repetition. So it takes, just like baking a cake, it takes being in the right formation. It takes giving it time in the oven and it takes putting it all together properly. So for example, when I say given it the right formation, that means whatever has been working for you, therapy and recovery skills, peer support groups and meetings, all these things you just want to keep doing them on a daily basis. You want to keep that formation. You don't want to after rehab go home and then now sort of relax and have everything taken care of for you. You want to continue learning, working with everything that you learned and continue in the after care program. And you want to continue in an aftercare program or a sober living home in order to continue to work on those problems. And one of the problems that we see is a lot of times people will go to rehab. They'll finally make it to this step and that's great. But then what happens is families are really in a rush to get them back home and sort of because they have to make excuses where have they been, what's been going on. And if we rush to do that too soon, what happens oftentimes is people just aren't ready to be thrown back into work, thrown back into school, thrown back into family and don't have the skills yet to really navigate for the long run. So it's really important to be able to solidify all of that stuff. And it's also important to be in an environment of accountability and support. So if you're going back home and nobody's there to really monitor you or be able to pick up when the drug problem comes back or if you're slipping, that's going to be very different when you do it in the environment of an aftercare program or a sober living home where essentially you're going to be around other people that are recovering from addiction, other people who are going to monitor you, other people who are going to pick it up real quick and be able to figure out that something's missing or something's going on real quick and pull you up. And but if you do it at home with family, you may not have that opportunity, you may not have that option, people might not be able to pick it up. Also, what's important is in addition to accountability is support. So if you're not going to be able to find that back home in the sense that you are not going to be held accountable to do work or some sort of meaningful activity like go to school or keep up with your meetings or keep up with working on yourself, then that's also not going to put you in the best place for success. So keeping in formation, keeping in a tight formation after the rehab is incredibly important. Now, after that, you want to just then go in the right environment, like we said, and give it time. So you want to put it in the oven, you want to bake it, and you want to put it in the right environment and let it solidify. And then you simply want to give it time. So you want to do it over and over again every day, wake up going to meetings and repeating the process. And with all of this, inshallah, the change will occur. And how do you know when you're ready to kind of move on? The same way you would know with the cake. When you poke a cake, how do you know when a cake is ready? You poke the cake, and it's firm. It's not liquid inside. It's not going to crumble. And then you can take it out of the cake pan and it'll stand on its own. And in the same way, usually people know when they're ready to move on to the next step, when they're ready to move on from rehab, or when they're ready to move on from the sober living home, or when they're ready to get off from medications. There'll be something that will show you. And in a lot of ways, once, let's say, a life event happens or a life stressor happens, and you're able to manage that successfully, a lot of times that's a good way to check. So in other words, when you have something to stress you or some sort of pressure that you undergo and you successfully come out of it without using, that is a good indication that you're ready to move on to the next step. And that's it. Yeah, so every stage has its own time. So the mind stage has its own time, the body stage has its own time, and then the soul stage has its own time. And that's something you work on for the rest of your life. So the body stage is on the order of days, the mind stage is on the order of weeks, and then the soul stage is on the order of months, and honestly, the rest of your life. So with that, inshallah, people will be successful. Also, families play an important part in helping people get treatment. Families play an important part in preventing against this problem, and also treating this problem. But it's really important that families are equipped with the proper training in order to manage this problem. There's a lot of pitfalls. It's very hard. When it seems like we're helping, sometimes we can actually be harming. Sometimes when it seems like we're helping, we can actually be harming. Sometimes when it seems like we are supporting the patient or the loved one, we're actually enabling them to continue their use. So that's a tricky thing to navigate. It's a slippery slope, and there's a lot of places to go in order to learn how to do that. So for example, family groups, there's a family group over here on Saturdays at 11 a.m. It actually just finished up. So that exists. Family groups are important because what they do is they help families learn, how do I get my loved one into treatment? A lot of the calls we get is, I want my family member to get in treatment, but they're not ready. They don't want to get help, and it's important to recognize we can't control our loved one. There's nothing we can really do from the perspective of controlling the behavior, but there's a lot we can do by focusing on our behavior and how it affects them and interacts with them. And a large part of that is just learning what is enabling and how to prevent that from happening. That's not something you can really learn in one shot. Maybe you can get an intro to it, but it's important to go and get to a place where other people have learned about this and can guide you along that process and find success. So other people struggling with the same problem who have been successful and can hold you accountable to trying to set boundaries with your loved one, so on and so forth. And that exists as well. So with that, Insha'Allah, we'll stop a little early. If there's questions, feel free to ask, and if there's questions online, we'll ask them. Otherwise, Insha'Allah, we'll wrap up there. Yeah, that's a good question. So the question was spirituality and religion, they're often used separately, and can they be used interchangeably, and which stage should you introduce that in? So essentially, in the rooms of recovery, there's a lot of talk about the difference of spirituality and recovery. One of the sayings that people say, it's hard to define, really, spirituality is hard to define, and then it's hard to define why make a change between the two, why make a differentiation between the two. I find it really helpful, the saying in the rooms of recovery, which is religion is for people who don't want to go to hell, spirituality is for people who have gone to hell and don't want to go back. Really, there's no differentiation between spirituality and religion. It's all the same. Spirituality is a dimension of religion. But just for teaching purposes, it's easy to separate it out. Like we separate out, for example, like Akhita, we separate out Fik, or parts of the Dean that are associated with practice, we separate out. Parts of the Dean that are associated with our beliefs, we separate out as a teaching tool, and then parts of the Dean that are associated with developing the heart and our character, we separate out, and we call it the science of Teschia, or self-reformation, or spirituality. And so in a lot of ways, people who are struggling with addiction, when they come into recovery, a lot of times there's a lot of shame, a lot of guilt. They've gone through a lot of suffering. They've thought about things on a really deep level. So they're philosophical in the sense that they've thought deeply about the meaning of suffering. Like for example, what does it mean that I'm the bad one? When I've lived my life, why am I with addiction the bad one? When I've lived my life as a result and a consequence of other people doing bad things to me. So for example, a lot of people with addiction will have, it's a history of trauma, a history of abuse, a history of parental conflict, a history of other issues, mental health issues. So they've gone through a lot of difficulties. And those are risk factors for developing addiction. So when people come to recovery, they have a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, but they're also thinking about things deeply. And spirituality oftentimes can be an open concept. Whereas people may look at religion or have certain ideas about religion that are more of a closed concept, which are more, in reality, probably based on their own personal experiences. A lot of people grow up and they have really positive experiences about with religion, spirituality. And then sometimes it's easier to grasp onto spirituality as a starting point. And then when we look at Life of the Prophet, the Sahaba, they started with working on themselves. And then all the rules, all the Ahqam came down later, like fasting, the Qad, the full form of Salah, Hajj, all that came down later, much later, when they were all in Medina. So when in the first 10, 15 years, the Prophet was really working on the hearts of people and their belief system. Similarly, all the shorter surahs and the Meccan surahs are short surahs focused on the heart and the belief system. And when the heart and the thinking was sort of leaning towards Islam and the hearts were filled with Islam, then all these rules came out and all the lifestyle came down, which was there to protect that spirituality and was there to achieve higher levels of spirituality. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would argue whenever the patient is, whenever the person's ready. So you have people that, you know, people come from all walks of life with addiction. Every story is different. So you have people that have been in and out of recovery and they've maybe traveled down the spiritual path for a while and slipped because, let's say, they lost their loved one. Let's say their child passed away and then they, you know, that's so overwhelming for them. They go back to using substances for a short period of time. So, you know, they're already in, they're ready to really engage in spirituality and pick it up even while they're going through withdrawal and while they're going through this whole process, if they go into withdrawal, some people don't go through withdrawal. So they start right away. Other people, it may be something that they grew up with and they're open to, but they are just not ready to start talking and thinking about it because it's something that they, maybe there's a lot of shame there. There's a lot of pain there. And maybe there's other experiences there where they're just not ready to discuss it. And so it's just about meeting people where they're at and giving them what they need at that moment and slowly stringing them along to the next moment of what's good for them. Yeah, so it's definitely different for every person. Yeah, you know, that's hard to say. You know, from the perspective of data, there's not a lot of data to describe it. So the question is, do we see rates of addiction and relapse that are similar or different in the Muslim population and utilization of care? Yeah, yeah, so that's a really good question. So, you know, so everything that I talk about would be somewhat anecdotal and what our group has seen or talked about based on what they're all seeing in the community. But what I will say is from our experience, we definitely do see, we don't see, like I can tell you, for example, at the hospital I work at, we treat addiction in the hospital. And we treat addiction, you know, Monday through Friday, we're seeing patients. It's a catchment that's open to the public in the Palo Alto, San Mateo County area. Now, we run a lot of demographic data on that service and the data really, you know, ethnically and racially really mirrors what we see in the general population in terms of that breakdown. And when it comes to Muslims, we're seeing Muslims represented on that service in same numbers and same percentages as they are in the general population. So, there's no lack of the problem. What I do see is that the addiction looks the same in Muslim communities and the treatment looks the same essentially. The spirituality, sure, it's going to be, it's going to have a Muslim feel to it. But a lot of times the barriers to treatment, to get into treatment, are uniquely Muslim. They're exceptional. They're very different than what I deal with. So, what I deal with that is nonprofit is very different. That's focused on Muslims. There does a lot of Muslim outreach. It's very different stories than what I hear about in my day job, where I'm just dealing with the general public. The sort of barriers that we hear, and some of those are not necessarily Islamic barriers. They're not Islamic barriers, but they're more so due to cultural barriers, cultural issues that Islam's housed in, in these families and places. There's a brother that's coming out with a study. He presented it at the Canada Muslim Mental Health Conference some time ago. And he presented some numbers that showed that Muslims, based on epidemiological data in the U.S., he presented that Muslim, the rate of Muslims with addiction is comparable to the rate of addiction in the general population. In fact, the numbers were higher. And so, and the other thing that he presented was that Muslims born outside the country versus Muslims that are born in the country, it was close to a 50-50 split. I can't remember the exact number, but the percentage was in the 50s. It's half and half. So, this is not like a problem. And that's certainly what we're seeing in our organization when we get calls. We're seeing people from all different backgrounds, all different backgrounds. Sure, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think addressing trauma is incredibly important throughout the whole process. So, when it comes to, you know, there's the ACEs study, which looked at childhood adverse experiences and then how that relates to people developing addiction later in their life. So, they would say, if you had one adverse childhood experience, it increases your likelihood by this percentage. If you had two, it goes up higher and higher. That included emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and other forms of trauma and other adverse experiences. So, certainly trauma is something that, if it's unaddressed, can put somebody in a vulnerable position to address addiction. And here's the thing. People think like, it's what happens is this person has history of trauma. And so, now they're constantly thinking about that trauma, and they use drugs and alcohol to alleviate that or escape that. A part of that's true, but trauma also leads to other physiological and psychological problems. So, for example, you can have, let's say, somebody has a history of abuse, and then they develop a separate issue of, like, a chronic anxiety. And so, it's not necessarily they're anxious because they're constantly preoccupied with their trauma. It's because of something that's fractured within them at an age where they really didn't have the vocabulary to process it. And so, what that means is that trauma is incredibly important to address. And unresolved trauma can then just lead to people using substances. Number one. And then, once people come out of substance use, oftentimes, they're able to think more clearly, and then they start processing things, and they start thinking about things. And now, they have to sort of confront all the things that they have gone through. So, addressing trauma is incredibly important. It's just at what stage. So, when we come and see somebody in the hospital, we'll bring up trauma and we'll talk about it, but we won't go deep into it. We bring it up because then now, we try to create a plan that includes that when the time is appropriate. Sometimes, bringing up trauma and early recovery can be for some people. And again, it's all individualized based on each person. Sometimes, that can really destabilize people. So, for example, you have somebody that is going through withdrawal and they're just trying to sort of hold on and go through that process. Then, they go through the mind phase where they're compulsively thinking about using, and they're just trying to work through each craving as they come. They're moving from one to the next, trying to keep their time occupied. Now, if you add on to that, let's now dive back into this issue that every time we talk about it, it leads to a lot of stress and a lot of emotions that might add fuel to the fire. It might not be the best time to address that, but everybody has a point where it becomes, everybody has a different point at which they should manage different things. And so, it's absolutely important to address co-occurring mental health conditions like anxiety, anxiety, depression, and other issues along with addiction. And that should be managed along with addiction. And then, when it comes to trauma, just finding the right time to manage that. So, sure, if it's the pressing issue right away, it's the pressing issue within the first month, two months, then it should absolutely be addressed. But if it's not the pressing issue and rekindling that is going to make things worse, then it's something to bring about at the right time. And yeah, absolutely, it's so important to build those community ties to be able to address those things. Okay, inshallah, we can wrap up, inshallah. Okay, great. If you guys have any questions, we can ask afterwards.