 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen wa salatu wa salam ala as-sharaf al-anbiya wa al-mursaleen Sayyidina Muhammad wa al-Alihi wa sahbihi wa tabi'in. Allahumma alimna ma infa'imna wa fa'inabimma alamtina wa zidna alman yinfa'ibna. So inshallah this will be our last session before we break for Ramadan and then inshallah we'll start up after Ramadan. I wanted to talk about what we've done so far and looking ahead in regards to what we're gonna cover after we get back together in Ramadan. And I also wanted to talk a little bit today about the rationale behind our approach. So starting with what we have already covered, we cover the first two sections of the book. So we went over part one, understanding addiction, the basics of understanding addiction. Why is addiction just different than substance use? And why does addiction require a different approach than someone just experimenting with drugs and alcohol? And then motivation, how does motivation work and why do people change? How do we use motivation? The principles of motivation to motivate our loved ones. Then the second part which we finished last week was how do we take care of ourselves through this process? The third part which we'll start after Ramadan is how do we help our loved ones? And that's the largest section of the book. I wanted to talk a little bit about Medina House. So Medina House started as a response to the opioid epidemic and drug overdose deaths. So if you see in this graph, this is a graph of overdose deaths increasing in the United States. You can see that it's exponentially increasing, largely driven by opioids. Out of all drug deaths, opioid overdose deaths are overwhelmingly the highest percentage of death reports that we receive in the Muslim community, but we see addiction from all different substances being used. A lot of the drug overdose deaths are considered mysterious deaths in the community. So they appear to the community as mysterious deaths, but the family and those they seek out for help are aware of the overdose deaths. There's a documentary on vice titled opioid addiction in Dearborn's Muslim community that clearly articulates this phenomenon of mysterious deaths. And there's a reason why that occurs and we'll go into that in a moment. Drug addiction overdose death is occurring in the Muslim community and why wouldn't it? We have comparable rates of other outcomes in the Muslim community. We have comparable rates of deforestation, mental illness, other factors that the larger non-Muslim community struggle with as well. We have the same risk factors for drug use and drug addiction in the Muslim community. The number one risk factor that I'm gonna go over is access to opioids. So we have geographic access to opioids. There's no place in the United States that's really safe from access to opioids and drugs. And drugs are everywhere. This is a national problem of drug overdose deaths. We have risk factors such as mental health conditions. That's another risk factor. Trauma is another risk factor. Emotional abuse, physical abuse. The same risk factors for addiction exist in the Muslim community. And we have the same deficiencies and protective factors. So sometimes what people think is, well, Muslims don't use drugs and alcohol. So we should have less of an issue. And that might be true to some degree. And studies show that religious participation and spirituality are a protective factor against addiction. But that's just it. There needs to be participation. So a Pew Research Center study in 2017 showed that 42% of US Muslims pray Salah regularly. And that's not to like judge anybody, but Salah's a good objective outcome or indicator of the health of some of these Islam. It's a really good indicator to show the health of this as a protective factor for us. One of the research papers that inspired us to do what we do was a paper that was published in 2016, which reviewed substance use in the Muslim community. And the title of the review paper was 10 Years of Substance Use Research in the Muslim Populations. Where do we go from here? And basically what they found was, number one, substance use exists in the Muslim community. Number two, and here's the kicker. Accurate data is limited because self-reporting astigmatized behavior is what limits it. Another third thing that's worth mentioning is that substance use is different than substance use disorder. The paper is able to assess that substance use exists in the Muslim community, but to really get a feel of addiction existing is a little bit more challenging. You can think about the difference between substance use and substance use disorder as the difference between like unhealthy eating and having an eating disorder. So sure, unhealthy eating might respond to some education, some redirection and nudging on the right eating strategies, but an eating disorder requires medical attention and professional help. One of the conclusions that the paper made was they suggested because of the shame barrier, preventing Muslims from getting help, they suggested online substance use outreach programs. And specifically programs that involve the family. And that's sort of what inspired us to start these online classes and be able to offer something to people. This was another poll by the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding 2020 American Muslim Poll, which basically shows that a significant segment of the Muslim American community reports knowing another Muslim that currently or has struggled with drug or alcohol addiction in the past. So 37% say that they know a Muslim personally who has struggled with an addiction. It's an interesting way to ask the question because it saves people from having to worry about stigma. And this is an important paper that came out just a few months ago. It's a systematic narrative review. What that means is they looked at the existing literature out there that looked at addiction in the Muslim community. And they were looking at barriers. Barriers and facilitators to accessing treatment, basically. What are the barriers? What stands in the way of people accessing treatment in the Muslim world? What's interesting here is they included studies in the Muslim world and they defined the Muslim world as countries that were 70% or more Muslim or studies in Muslim communities that were done specifically in Muslim communities in areas where Muslims were a minority. So they looked at Muslim specific populations. Now, this is where it gets interesting. They found the barriers for Muslims entering treatment. Number one is denial of the problem severity. Having a loved one or having drug and alcohol problems exist and addiction exist but not really even acknowledging how bad the problem is. Feeling like it's a problem that that loved one will eventually phase out of or not really understanding the dynamics of addiction and what it is and how to address it. The second barrier to treatment that this large study discovered, they looked at several different countries, Muslim countries was there was a lack of trust in the treatment system. So somebody who then sees that there's a problem and gets to the point where they say, well, treatments needed but can't get through the barrier of asking for help and getting into treatment. The third theme that they discovered in Muslims with addiction is there was a fear of breach and confidentiality and privacy. So I understand I have a problem. I haven't trust in the treatment system to see that it works or it might help people with addiction but I still don't wanna go or I'm still worried about going because I don't want somebody to find out. I don't wanna bring shame to myself, my family, my community and I'm sure this is something we can all relate to and then they identified the need for more community support. And this kind of brings up our approach. So we looked at the barriers to access treatment and how we could address these barriers on the community level, the family level and the individual level. Basically on the community level, educating about what addiction is, telling stories about Muslims and how they sort of fall into addiction and then more importantly how they get out of it and stories of success. So people can really see how it can happen and see themselves in it and have compassion for the problem because I think once people understand it they tend to be able to see themselves or their family members in it and see how it can hit closer to home and have compassion for it. Number two, focusing on and looking at stigma and really honoring shame as a mechanism in society that's important but also how it can become problematic and prevent people from getting the help that they need. And we've talked about this a lot in the past I'm not gonna go too much into that. And then try and identify people that are silently suffering who may not be at a point where they want to seek help or get help, which is fine but offering them options and solutions meeting them where they're at and not simply dismissing people as not ready for change because they're not ready to take steps but really acknowledging that it's hard to ask for help and it's hard to be part of a community or feel like you're part of a community where whether it be real or not have this perceived feeling that something bad would happen if you sought out help like bringing shame to yourself or your family. The old way of treatment was taking people and fitting them into a cookie cutter model. The new theories, the new way of treatment is meeting people where they're at and learning about them, getting to know them and then finding out what fits in their life and finding out what fits in regards to where they're at and understanding this problem and simply moving them along to the next step. It's not constructive to just simply dismiss people as not being ready when we can meet them where they're at and help them in the stage they're in. And then we talk about the family level. So on the family level, it's important to talk about what is addiction? Because sometimes people think that we're trying to normalize drug and alcohol use. We're not trying to normalize drug and alcohol use. What we're trying to do is normalize stopping drug and alcohol use and normalizing taking the tools to stop drug and alcohol use. But that really requires understanding what is addiction? So somebody that's used drugs or alcohol once or twice that's not necessarily something that you would need to go to addiction treatment for that might require some family training, maybe the family taking approaches other than addiction treatment to handle that problem and how addiction treatment is different than that. Then number two is really talking about the family's role. So the family's role is very important in recovering from addiction, sometimes maintaining addiction and locking it in place. And the more sophisticated family structures are, the more involved families are, the more deeply rooted families are, the more important it is to address and involve family to help with this problem. Interpreting on the family's very important. Let's put aside families playing a part in the development of addiction. Families will absolutely play a part in the recovery process of addiction and can play a part and help in that part. And that's incredibly important to know. And every family's different. And there's great data that training families in certain areas can increase the chances of their loved one getting into treatment. And those are the topics that we focus on when we talk about addiction treatment. So understanding the family's role, understanding what addiction is, how to manage expectations are on addiction, learning how to pace yourself through the process of treatment. And then finally how to help your loved one. Then also it's important to work on the individual level. So people with addiction themselves have to come to terms. There's a phase in addiction where they themselves don't know that they have a problem with drugs or alcohol. Sometimes it happens really insidiously. They get to a point where they start finding that their drug and alcohol use is problematic. And then they may come to a stage where they identify as having an addiction because they've tried to stop and they can't. So they themselves are going through a process of trying to understand addiction, try to understand what is treatment, why is it worth going to treatment? Nobody really wants to go to a family class. Nobody really wants to go to an addiction treatment program like a rehab. These are all hard things. You almost have to bind to the fact that addiction's really hard and go through a trial and error process of trying to do it on your own to some degree to recognize that you need help. And that process is an important process for everybody to go through. And then finally the importance of integrating spirituality into addiction treatment because spirituality has been shown to be protective against addiction. But then also numerous studies show repeatedly that integrating spirituality into addiction treatment has been associated with more success rates. In a lot of ways, what we're trying to do is not replace anything. We're just trying to break that barrier. So when it comes to like on the community level, just start the conversation on the family level, helping them navigate through addiction and get connected to treatment. Family support groups that they can go to on their own. And then on the individual level, having people get connected to existing treatment and helping them navigate their faith in order to do that, but not necessarily replacing anything. In a lot of ways, we're a bridge to help people overcome a lot of those barriers that we talked about earlier. And Shala will wrap up and we can open it up to questions and check-ins, Shala.