 It's alright, yeah. Hi, welcome to the next episode of Recover Loud. I'm Laurie. I'm Mike. And we're Recover Loud. On today's episode, we're going to talk about the unconditional love and what that looks like for us in recovery. When we talk about harm reduction, there's a lot of stigma associated with that. When it comes down to it though, all we're talking about is saving lives, getting through today, living through today to possibly seek recovery tomorrow. The chances of recovery after a fatal overdose are zero percent. Path to recovery, any path to recovery greatly increases those odds. Harm reduction is defined as a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with substance use. It is also a moment for social justice built on a belief in a respect for the rights of people who use drugs. Medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, is defined as the use of medications in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies to provide a whole-patient approach to the treatment of substance use disorder. We've found that there are many paths for many people, and all of them work a little differently. Sometimes something might not work for one, but it works well for another. MAT is an option for people who are looking for recovery. We at Recovery Loud, Recovery on the Road, we support all pathways because, again, it's all about saving lives. That's why we started what we do. That's why we continue doing what we do, and that's why we're here today. My personal journey includes MAT. Before I entered recovery, before I ever thought about detox, I didn't really believe in MAT. I had my own personal thoughts because of the stigma that's out there. I went into detox, I spoke with the doctor, I learned about the changes in my brain that could hinder my efforts to get away from the opiates. This medication proved to be something that was helpful to me. It took away the obsession. It took away that desire, that need for substance for me to continue with my day. I know and I believe, because of my own experience, that having that time, my mind freed up, that gave me a chance or an opportunity to really think about the issues that were causing me to use, what was behind my endless search to hide, to get away. I wasn't happy with my life, and substances were just a way to avoid that. The Surin's service program is another form of harm reduction. It is about loving people where they're at. We are all someone, someone. We are all someone's mother, someone's father. Someone's uncle. Meeting the needs of the people within the community where they are at. So what is a Surin's service program? It is a community-based prevention program that can provide a range of services, including linkage to substance use disorder treatment, access to and disposal of sterile syringes, injection equipment and vaccination testing and linkage to care and treatment for infectious diseases. Just the other day, I stopped by 195 Main Street in Lewiston for the grand opening of COSI, Church of Safe Injection. I sat with Carrie Morissette, executive director of COSI, and this is what she had to say. Hi, Jerry. Hi, Lori. How are you? I'm doing all right. What's it mean for you today to have COSI open up here in Lewiston? I think for me, it was emotional and symbolic at the same time. I remember being three months over with Jesse running syringes out of the back of his car up here at Lewiston and constantly being harassed by police, telling us they were gonna shut us down. And now we're certified and we opened up our first exchange in the same town. They said we would never be able to exist and I wish he was here. So Carrie, if anybody needs to get in contact with Church of Safe Injection, how would they do that? So for media and administrative, you would contact me directly, 207-332-4802. And for supplies and daily operations, you can call the office here at 207-241-2537. Starting operations in Lewiston is an amazing opportunity. There are limited resources here and I think this town needs some tender loving care. And this first exchange, physical location, is just gonna be a pathway to expansion and opening up syringe service programs in rural areas, aren't that many resources? Now people out there wanted to tell me, is there a place online? There's a Facebook page Church of Safe Injection, right? There is, we have a Venmo, it's at Church of Safe Injection. People can donate and that will help either people being scholarshiped into sober living and treatment, or it will help us run outreach events in the community. And do things such as winter gear giveaways, or fundraisers, or whatever it may be. I remember meeting Jesse at a meeting at the PRCC and I was like three months sober and I was working at Dunkin' Donuts and like hated life. And when I started volunteering with him, I was like, okay, this makes me feel good. Handing out syringes makes me feel good. I like keeping people safe. And in the beginning, that's what I thought it was, and it has turned into so much more. Before I was the person that people never thought would get sober, I was the person they would walk past on the street and turn their nose up and clutch their purses and didn't think to anything of. And now I'm the person people call when they want to get sober, when they need to find a warm shelter, or when they need clothing closet, or when they need funds to pay their phone bill, or when they need to get a family shelter, or domestic violence situations, human trafficking situations. And it's just, it's so fulfilling. There's a message you can give to people out there. Is everybody's watching you on YouTube? What would you tell them at the counter? I would say that it is never too late to be who you're meant to be. It was really nice to hear from Kerry on the COSI opening. I am an advocate for the main recovery advocacy project. What that means is I do advocacy work in the outreach. I get education out there to people. I take turns in testimony for local bills that are coming up for the state of Maine. This 130th legislative second session is already underway and has had its hearing for the LD1909. An act to remove restrictions on the syringe service program. This bill allows the state of Maine to lift the requirement of the one to one by putting a cap on the number of the hypodermic apparatuses a program can give participants without requiring the exchange of a used hypodermic apparatus. From Gordon Smith, director of the opioid response in the governor's office, was his quote, this is how we meet the community that still uses drugs. Another way our legislators are working to help meet the needs of the public. And the community is LD1862. This is an act to strengthen Maine's Good Samaritan Law concerning drug related medical assistance. The expansion aims to protect all individuals at the scene of an overdose for many non-violent offenses. Lori and I, as well as many people in the recovery community, those from MiRap, those from Church of Safe Injection, those from Maine Access Points, those people who are out on the streets meeting the needs of the people in the community. We all support this expansion of the Maine's Good Samaritan Law. And we ask that you do too. You can join our efforts by going to expandgoodsamforme.com and sign up to help. The bill will be coming up to the legislature on Wednesday at 10 a.m. I'll be there in our capital of Maine with many other advocates really to give our testimony and why it is so important for us to strengthen this law. Mackenzie Chamberlain died at the age of 21 after overdosing with a group of other people in a home in Worcester County. To my knowledge, when the paramedics got there, she had been deceased for a while. Now she passed away in 2020, just a week before her 21st birthday. The Good Samaritan Law, as it stands, is a law that is not communicated to the public. People do not know that right now, since 2019, that it was voted in, that the Good Samaritan Law protects a person calling to seek medical assistance for a person who is overdosing. They didn't do that in Kenzie's position. The day that Kenzie passed away, they had to clean up after themselves. So they wanted to make sure that they didn't go to jail, that they didn't lose their children, that they were in fear of their own safety. Now what that tells me is that Kenzie's life hung in a balance of uncertainty. We need to educate our community members in the state of Maine. We need to save more daughters and save more best friends. So I implore you to go to the legislation.main.gov, sign up if you have a story related to overdose or related to the Good Samaritan Law, related to LD 1909, an act to strengthen any of our laws. Be active. You can also send us an email at recoveryotr18. gmail.com. We do look at them. We do respond. This is a platform for me. A platform for voices of people that we've lost, people that didn't know that there was help out there. I was one of those people. We were two of those people. We had friends that were in recovery, but we never knew. So when we found recovery, we don't want to keep it a secret. We don't want any more people to die because they just don't know. Thanks, Laurie, for sharing Kenzie's story. I know that that was a big event for you during our recovery that really got you wanting to make a difference and wanting to get involved and wanting to do everything we can to share recovery. As I mentioned at the top of the show, the chances of recovery are 0% after fatal overdose. And I see the chances of recovery before a fatal event at 100% because it's always possible at any moment in any day, at any time, somebody can make that choice. And you did it, I did it. We have hundreds of friends. Our crew, Katie, T, they're doing it. Tonight's episode is the first chance we have to have a crew with us. And we appreciate both of them for wanting to get involved, wanting to recover loud and to make a difference. You know, all we want to do is stop seeing our friends die. I want to educate all of you. We want you to know that there is a way there are laws. There's help. Yeah, and you know, if there's something that's standing in the way, you know, people like us, people like the main recovery advocacy project. Main access points. You know, all of us, you know, we do this because we have been affected. We want to make a change. We know it's possible and, you know, we're tired of seeing our friends die. So now we're going to take a minute and we're going to visit with my friends Zoe Brokis, who is at 195 Main Street the other day, the opening of COSI. Hi, I'm Zoe Brokis and I'm the Director of Operations for the Church of Safe Injection. I joined the team in January of 2020, which is right after we lost our founder, Jesse Harvey, who died in September. You know, this organization was really in the beginning Jesse's way of trying to respond to the people in our community who were dying and he wanted to respond quickly and he didn't want to wait around for rules and regulations to get in place. We went to different parts of the community where he knew there was a high need, popped over in the back of his car and started handing out clean supplies. And he always had snacks and he always had socks and hand warmers. And what he had most of all was just unconditional love for the people that he met with. And she like officially asked me to join the organization in January of last year. I guess it was last year, I think I said 2020, but that doesn't make sense. It would have been 2021. And we kind of started to figure out how we were going to sustain this organization. And so we applied for state certification to operate as as mobile units. You know, we didn't have any money. We didn't have a space, but we knew that we needed to keep the organization alive when we really wanted to. And so with the support of our community partners, we just kind of kept plugging along. Applied for state certification to operate five different programs and we're finally granted those. And Lewiston was always a place, you know, this is where Jesse started and this is where Carrie lives. And so Lewiston was like a natural location for us where we knew the need was huge. And most importantly, we had a bunch of community partners who were happy to have us here. Like a year exactly to when we first started our certification process. It's pretty incredible that we're talking today in our office right on Main Street in Lewiston, right where Jesse started at all. So it feels really special. When we're considered harm reduction as a way to save lives, there's lots of different examples of harm reduction out there. One that you might practice every day is wearing a seatbelt. You know, that law is intended to save your life in case of an accident. You know, our harm reduction programs when it comes to substance use are the same thing. You know, we are hoping to save lives in case of an accident. You know, on the table here today, we've got some harm reduction supplies. One that most people are aware of is Narcan and we do offer as well fentanyl testing strips. Condoms. When people are out on the streets and they don't know what they're using, it's a crapshoot. They're playing Russian roulette and it's not because they don't care about their life. It's not because they just want to get high. They're meeting a need for the substance use disorder, the disease that they suffer from. So having fentanyl testing strips on hand to test the product to make sure that it's safe to use. Using Narcan, if they find out that it's not safe to use. You know, these other programs, there's books out there. You know, anything that helps us today to get through today so that we're live tomorrow, you know, reading. You know, you've got some books that you've read. Yeah, you know, another form is just gathering your stuff for your toolbox. So harm reduction can be scary when you hear the word, but it really isn't. Like Mike said, you know, it's about that seat belt. You put that seat belt on, you hear that click, you know you're going to get to your destination safely. So by meeting the needs of the communities where they're at, we need to figure out where each individual is at, not where they are at as a whole. What works for Mike isn't going to work for me, you know, and it may not work for you. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, trip ups happen. Recovery isn't sober or clean. Recovery is a program. It's a way of life. For me, I grabbed on to the dialectical behavioral therapy or the DBT that I was taught while I was in my rehab. And what that taught me was the more I knew, the more that I could put into my brain, the better chances I was going to have at living a successful life. So just a couple I really wanted to share with you, one that's really important. We've had our daughter on the episode. I was a balling mess. I apologize. That was very emotional. And we've done a lot of positive feedback. Yeah, she's great. And something that she did while I was in rehab was pick up a book and she told me one day, she's like, I don't even know why I picked up this book. And she said, but I want to give it to you. And it's been one of my favorite books. And I love it because the book itself is made out of recycled paper. So to me, that stands out as we don't throw ourselves away. We make something beautiful out of what we had, right? The book's called The Language of Recovery. And it's a combination of like poems and stories. And I just love it. I didn't graduate from the Army, but I did to a couple weeks and I made it almost two weeks before it would have been graduation. But I came home. But anyway, I made a couple good friends. One of them was my friend Kayla Riley. I love you, Kayla. I didn't think anybody was there for me when I was going into rehab because my attic brain isolated myself. And I got this amazing book from her that shares on uplifting myself as a woman, which was important. And then, of course, we all got a love. Bill and Bob got him when I was going to all those meetings in rehab, you know, because that's important. So I guess my point is just to show another form of harm reduction and building up that toolbox. But like Mike said, we don't want you to go out and do substances, okay? That's not what we want you to do. We want you to find a way to get you to recovery. But if for right now you can't figure out how to get to recovery and not use, we want you to be safe and we want you to live in main access points. Yeah, you can look them up on their website, mainaccesspoints.org. We are trained distributors and, you know, we can train others to use Narcan. And we can get you the supplies that you need. If anybody's interested in carrying Narcan or getting a training, you can hop onto mainaccesspoints.org or reach out to us again at recoveryotr18 at gmail.com. You can also find us on Facebook, our Facebook group, Recovery on the Road. And you can also, you know, just shoot us a message. Leave a comment. If you're watching us on YouTube, leave a comment. Don't forget to like the show. Share it with your friends. You know, this is how we recover loud. You know, we share our story. We share our experience. We share what we know. Yeah, we share what we've learned. And, you know, it might not work for you. It might not work for your son. It might not work for your sister. But there are programs out there. And, you know, I'll be straight up with you. I don't have one program that worked for me. I took a little bit from here. I took a little bit from there. And I combined, you know, a recipe. Actually, a good friend of mine... So that's actually really good, because I wanted to lead into Rob. Yeah. But you go ahead and talk about Rob's muffin recipe. Yeah, so a good friend of mine a couple years ago, he owns a sober house. And a sober reentry house. And, you know, he looked at me one day and said, it seems like you found a recipe to make some pretty good muffins. And if those muffins are good to you, keep making those damn muffins. You know? And that's... I've lived by that. And I've always remembered it. And Rob's a good friend of ours. He was at the hearing for... So Rob was also my landlord for my sober house. So when I graduated from Crossroads, I went to a woman's sober house called Journey House, which was originally established by Jesse Harvey May Rest in Peace. But Rob Carac can happen to be my landlord. Crystal Law was my executive director, Rust in Peace, and Ashley Renny was my house manager before she became the executive director. Now, with all this information about Mr. Rob and being our friend, Rob was at that hearing for the LD1909 that I attended as well. And, you know, there was something that... He's passionate. He believes in saving lives. He looks at an individual as themselves, not as a whole group, like what works for an individual. And he had the most amazing thing to say, that I asked everyone to think about. And what he said was, before Vice President Pence was Vice President Pence, he made a comment. And it wasn't in the support... Well, he actually opened up a safe syringe program in his state. In Indiana, I believe, right? Yeah. So the progressiveness of Mr. Pence, of Vice President Pence, wasn't that he supported harm reduction. He supports that it works. That it works. So even someone, you know, who's as politically viewed as he can be, noticed that it wasn't about him liking the pathway or not liking the pathway. It was about the facts. Harm reduction, the syringe service program, MAT, all of these can lead you to a path of recovery that looks right for you. So... And I think it's good to point out, you know, a lot of people look at recovery as a destination, you know. And we say it a lot, you know, a path to recovery. But really, it's a path of recovery. Because, you know, recovery is not a destination. You know, every day I can find something to work on to better my life, you know. Me, too. And, you know, right now I may have started on an MAT program, but that doesn't mean that my goal isn't sobriety. Right. You know, I can guarantee that without MAT, my journey would probably not have gotten me to where I am today. My MAT, you know, looks a little different than other people. Because, again, you know, I pull from the brain the DBT, but cannabis is a great form of an MAT. And for me, it works. I also have mental health issues that I didn't have taken care of before recovery. And even in the earliest parts of my recovery, I wasn't ready to take those steps. But when you look at harm reduction in a whole, you know, not only is it the MAT programs and your prescribers or your physicians, but it's your mental health counselors. It's your substance use counselors. It's your peers in your community. We are both state registered peer recovery coaches. Mike just finished the coach revision, so I think that makes you a certified. I put in my application for certification. Certification. Yeah. That's pretty cool. And this is a new program for me. Three years ago, would you have thought you were going to be a certified peer recovery coach working in an MAT program? No. Just to let everybody, three and a half years ago, I worked on a farm. It was all about physical labor. Getting messed up at the end of the day. Yeah. I did whatever I had to do today to get paid today to get what I needed to. And now, you know... Life looks great. Oh, yeah. It's not perfect. It's not perfect. Two people running an individual program, bump heads sometimes. We got 25 years together, 23 married. We got three kids. But if you want it, you work at it. You work for it. You go get it. Thanks again for joining us for Recover Loud. Remember, if you're struggling today, please reach out. I, for one, I know Lori would be another. We would rather hear from somebody who's struggling than read about their untimely death tomorrow. So remember, reach out. You can find us at Recovery on the Road, Facebook Group. We're also on TikTok, Twitter. Instagram. Instagram. You know, send us an email at recoveryotr18 at gmail.com that will be listed at the end of the show. You know, and just remember, you know, it's all about staying alive today. We do care. We do love you where you're at today. Have a good night, everybody. Don't forget, Recover Loud. Recover Loud. Recover Loud.