 When we get started, we have a very important reminder. We are going to have a lot of really beautiful people telling some beautiful stories about recovery. We want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak. So if you look in the very back of the auditorium, you will see our colleague, Cindy. So let's give a big round of applause for everybody. Come on. Come on. And so when you're up here speaking, when you've got about a minute left, she will hold up our world-famous one-minute sign. When you have 30 seconds left, she will hold up the 30-second sign. If, God forbid, you have gone over your time limit, you will get the dreaded dude-no-really sign, which means it's time for you to please wrap up. So before we jump in, I want to invite my colleague, Gary DeCarolis, up here. Gary, where did you go? Gary, come on, turn for Gary DeCarolis, everybody. Come on. You know it. You know it. And we were looking around the office the other day at some photos of one of the first recovery days. And it was just a very small group of people over in a conference room at the Capitol Plaza Hotel. And we realized that those folks were the real giants who were talking about recovery back when nobody was. And we are standing on their shoulders. And we're very, very lucky to be living with that legacy. And we want to honor one of those giants now. And I'd love to have Gary talk about Dale. Thanks, Peter. Good morning, everybody. We lost one of our true pioneers in recovery, Dale Robb, this is a couple of days ago, who started, founded, and worked day in, day out at Serenity House. He passed away a few days ago. So I thought nothing better than to start our morning with a moment of silence and help send him to the other side with all our love and support. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Dale. Thank you. Great. It's my pleasure to welcome up to the podium our first special guest. One of the themes this year is going to be Vermont Recovers Together. And one of the ways that we recover together is through tremendous political support. And through innovative programs like recovery residences. I think we're so lucky to have a president pro tem of the Senate, Tim Ash, who's got a background in housing and who's been a fierce advocate for both treatment and recovery. And Tim, we'd love to have you join us up here. Well, thank you. And welcome, everyone. My name's Tim Ash. I'm the president of the Vermont Senate. And as was just mentioned, one of my past lives was working as an affordable housing developer for Cathedral Square. I'm not sure how many people are familiar with Cathedral Square. Cathedral Square is mostly known for providing housing for senior citizens of modest means, but also have another part of the mission, which is to provide housing for people with disabilities and people with mental health challenges and oftentimes people with addiction challenges. So that was always, it wasn't the tagline of Cathedral Square, but it was one of our important side missions, which I felt really proud to be able to partner with organizations like the Howard Center and the Lund Center, providing housing and supports to people who were really in need of assistance. I'll just tell you briefly, when I was a kid, like most people, the images of addiction were always filled with stigma, rather, bleak. But my dad, who spent more than 40 years as a probation officer, ultimately being the chief of probation at the courthouse in the community I grew up in, was, along with the judge at the local court and other partners, one of the pioneers of one of the first so-called drug courts in the United States. And as I was driving down today, I thought that was 30 years ago, and that's like, now that I have to say things like 30 years ago, I'm realizing how old I am. I'm getting, I should say. But through that lens, I was able to see that using the drug court model in the community I grew up in, it was really saying that this is a public health issue and this is something we have to get the stigma out of the way and actually get people on the road to recovery. I am already very impressed by the vibe in the room, which is largely celebratory. I think that oftentimes when I'm over in the statehouse talking about how we're gonna provide support for people in recovery or people facing those early days of confronting their addiction, we often think about the hardest moments. Today I think really is a day of hope and inspiration. And I can think of few things more inspiring really than people who have confronted their addiction and are on that journey to recovery. I also wanna say that it is also inspiring the people, family, friends, coworkers who support people on that journey. One of the other things that's important to me, and I've spent basically the last eight years of my time in the Senate working with some of the people in this room, co-writing almost every piece of legislation that relates to fighting addiction, supporting people in recovery, mental health policies. And I've been very proud to work alongside people in this room on that. And much of the emphasis has been on opiate addiction. And opiate addiction obviously has been tearing its way through communities throughout this country. But one of the things I've really tried to impress upon my peers is not to forget alcohol and other addictions, which in volume of human lives affected continues to be the single biggest public health challenge when it comes to addiction. So I know it sometimes sounds a little strange for me to make a point of saying that we have to remember alcohol misuse and alcohol addiction and alcoholism and make sure that's still in the conversation because I know that it's tearing so many lives apart. So I'll be brief now and just reiterate how completely reaffirming it is to have people in the room here celebrating recovery. From the point of view of the legislature where sometimes it can seem very clinical writing words on pieces of legislation, you're all putting faces to why we do the work in the first place. This is gonna be my last year in the state Senate because I'm attempting to move on to other pastures and just wanna say thank you to those of you who have worked elbow to elbow with writing most of the legislation, which has enabled programs like the recovery network across the state and the funding. Every day I've come down here, I haven't done it to be some guy who gets his picture in the paper but really rooted in trying to make people's lives better. But none of that would be possible without both the people who do paid work to support people in this room, but also the very people in the room who have confronted their own challenges and are fighting their way to recovery. So thank you so much for the inspiration you're giving me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. And as Tim mentioned, one of the real backbones of Vermont's communities and the backbone of Vermont's recovery supports are our turning point centers. In every corner of the state there is a hub where people can go and get extraordinary care and recovery supports and recovery services. They are really, really beautiful. What we'd like to do now is to honor the staff and volunteers and board members and guests of those centers. So when you hear your center mentioned, if you could please stand up and remain standing. I know that we've got the Kingdom Recovery Center from St. Jay in the house. Woo! The North Central Vermont Turning Point Center in the house. There you go. There you go. We've got the Turning Point Center of Addison County in the house. Come on, St. Jay, stand up, stand up. We've got the Turning Point Center of Dennington in the house. The Turning Point Center of Central Vermont in the house. We're here for Barry. The Turning Point Center of Chittenden County in the house. It's my home for the park. The Turning Point of Franklin County. Up in St. Alden. Woo! The Turning Point Center of Rutland is here today. The Turning Point Center of Springfield. The Turning Point Center of Lindum County. Upper Valley Turning Point. We've journeyed to Recovery Community Center of Newport and our beloved Vermont Recovery Network staff and volunteers. Let's hear it! Thank you all. Great, thank you. Vermont recovers together thanks to you all. It's really, really beautiful thing to see. We are also extremely lucky to have a Department of Health and our own ADAP that does such a nice job in understanding the power of recovery and the power of Vermont's recovery workforce and supports. And I'd like to ask our good friends from ADAP to stand up just so we can give them some recognition. Come on! That's what I'm talking about. I love it. And we'd love to invite up the head of ADAP the Deputy Commissioner Kelly Doherty to share her thoughts and views on 2020. Kelly, we're lucky to have you. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. And welcome everyone and congratulations on Recovery Day 2020. I have been in this role at the health department working closely with ADAP for it will be one year next week. And I just wanna say that one of the most inspiring parts of my role has been meeting so many of you in the recovery community and it has really been an inspiration and sort of a life-changing experience for me to meet all of you and I'm so grateful for that and I'm learning so much and it's just been wonderful. And at the Department of Health, broadly our mission is to promote and protect the health of all Vermonters. And I think that supporting recovery and people's paths to recovery is such a critical part of the Department of Health's mission. We value and support recovery throughout Vermont and the recovery centers that we just recognized, the Department of Health provides support for all of those recovery centers across the state and all of your centers supported services to almost 3,000 people a month on average throughout the state of Vermont, which is amazing. And every year, thousands of Vermonters transition from treatment to recovery and nearly 28,000 people across the state accessed services at recovery centers. This past year, 92 recovery coaches were trained through the Recovery Coach Academy and those recovery coaches are supporting so many people through all stages of their recovery, particularly early on. And this profession in Vermont is now recognized by the ICNRC, which is the National Certifying Board, which is amazing. We at the Department of Health have been strengthening our commitment to recovery by dedicating a staff person, Kelly Morrill, right here. Kelly is our program manager for recovery services and is tasked with coordinating statewide recovery work, looking at systems improvements and providing technical assistance and training and we're so lucky to have Kelly in this role. So Kelly, thank you so much. And now it gets a little confusing, Kelly and Kelly. And Tim Ash talked about stigma and I wanted to make a note that the Department of Health right now is actually actively working on a very broad stigma campaign that will launch this fall that is really aimed at breaking down the stigma around substance misuse and addiction. And the campaign is really targeted to family members, friends, community members, people in helping professions who may work with people either struggling with substance misuse or who are in recovery. We did a survey of over 300 people across Vermont to get their thoughts about how they felt about people with substance misuse disorder or people in recovery and really got a lot of rich information that really gave us a path as to where we need to go in order to start messaging to break down the stigma. And so the campaign will be multi-media and it's going to really address addiction as a health issue and really talk about language that can help support people, particularly those supporting family members or friends in their path to recovery so that they can best guide their family members into the path that works for them. It will look at treatment and recovery options and what community members can do to support people with substance use disorder in the community. And our hope is that this messaging will drive more people to pursue recovery and to utilize the life-saving services that you all provide. And finally, another initiative of the Health Department that we'll actually be launching next month is a centralized call center that will be a single point of contact for Vermonters who are looking either for information about substance use disorder or looking to access treatment or recovery services. There will be one number that people can call through which they can be directly connected to treatment services. So rather than saying, oh, now, okay, here are these five different places that you can try to call to get an appointment, this call center will be able to actually schedule people for an appointment with a treatment provider right then and there from that one phone call and will also be a clearinghouse for resources for family members who are looking for support for themselves as they try to support their loved one and also just providing information about substance use generally and will also, of course, have all of the resources around recovery services throughout Vermont so that people can be connected to the services that you all provide. We're really excited about this. It's called Vermont Help Link and we will be doing a media campaign as it's released so that people are aware of the service. We're actually doing some test calls right now to make sure that it's working well and if anyone is interested in participating in doing some test calls, you can get in touch with us at the health department and we can let you know how to do that because we wanna make sure that we're doing it right. So there's so much to celebrate today and again, I congratulate each and every one of you who has found your own path to recovery and those of you who are here supporting the loved ones in your life and their recovery and I hope you have a great day and I'm so grateful to be here. Thank you so much, Peter and Peter and have a wonderful day. Thank you, Kelly. Great, I wanna also give a shout out to Kelly and to Lori. Thank you for all you're doing and thank you for introducing us to our next speakers. We wanna start with an individual whose mom, Brenda Bisbee, has been just a huge leader in Vermont in education, in health issues, in the arts. I was delighted to see on the other generation that his daughter is now active in highlighting best practice community organizations through Community Access TV. Allison's just amazing and Josh has done great things for my community of Shelburne and is just sort of a terrific guy about town and a real supporter of what needs to get done. So it's my honor to bring up to the stage Josh Simons. Josh, let's hear it, come on. I have three to five minutes and I've never gotten anything done in three to five minutes in my life. The purpose of me being up here when Kelly approached me was to be out about being in recovery and being a professional. I'm a lawyer in private practice and I also participate in an organization called the Vermont Lawyers Assistance Program and lawyers like a lot of professionals experience higher rates of substance use disorder and mental health problems than the general public. For example, on substance abuse disorder, lawyers are almost four times the general population. That's at a 20% rate. So I give little talks in rooms full of lawyers and I calculate how many people are in the room and then I have them count off by five and I make all the ones stand up because when you're in a room full of normies and they look at every fifth person standing up, it begins to impress them. There's another thing here and I'm glad that stigma has come up because I heard that Burlington is the second highest per capita concentration of lawyers in the country besides DC and we know that in DC you wanna drain the swamp. I also know, as some of you may know, that Coventry is the site of the largest landfill in the state. The thing that I didn't realize is that apparently Coventry got to choose first. That gives you a little thing about that jive to lawyers and lawyers being out and being in recovery is really a very challenging thing to do for those professionals. If they walk into a 12-step meeting, they may see somebody, especially if they're doing criminal defense work. They may just see people in the community and there is that stigma still alive and well and if it weren't for the work of this kind of thing and of recovery day and of all you people normalizing it and explaining that it is an illness and that it is a matter of public health, we'd still be in serious trouble. So I have a message of gratitude to your profession and to your occupation in the recovery community in general that all boats rise with it and never forget that there are plenty of one percenters. I mean, I was in Boston and in recovery and in secret lawyer meetings at the top of skyscrapers with decision makers who controlled the fate of the city and they are in recovery too. This is something that strikes across all fronts. One other thing I'll leave you with, I haven't even gotten the minute yet but I'm on a roll here. This guy apparently found a lamp and rubbed it and the genie came out and said you have three wishes and he said I wish for a world without lawyers and the genie done and then the genie said no more wishes and the guy said I thought I had two more wishes and the guy said the genie said sue me. So. Okay. Thank you so much John. Great. Our next guest is someone who really took matters into his own hands. Phil LaCroix was an auto mechanic living in under hill Vermont when frankly in his words he just had enough. He had enough of losing friends and community members to addiction. So he went on a long journey that was documented in this documentary that you may have seen if you were here earlier and he has an extraordinary tale to tell. So Phil LaCroix everybody, Phil where are you? Come on up here Phil. Good morning everybody. So everybody else has been kind of winging this but I need to write this down. So as you heard my name is Phil LaCroix. I'm a mechanic and an ultramarathon runner from Bolton. Like many of you I have lost many close family members and friends to addiction. After a string of losses in 2016 and 17 I felt compelled to do something about it. In September of 2017 I started the nonprofit enough is enough VT. The goal was to raise awareness about the need for sober housing by raising $50,000 for safe housing and treatment centers by through running the long trail in 10 days. Yes that means I ran 273 miles in a week and a half in one of the, it also happened to be one of the hottest Augusts on record. I can attest to that. I encountered many lows while I was running and I was able to pull myself through using memories of those lost and by calling my trail friend Premon for roughly half of the miles. I was able to complete the trail while raising over $30,000 to date. All of the money that's been raised has been split between V4 and Vermont Recovery Network. One thing I took away from this journey was that while I was helping within the recovery community I myself was struggling with alcohol addiction. If I don't know how many of you guys were here earlier if you were able to see the documentary that was playing at the very end when I finished the trail I finished the trail with a hard cider in my pack. I never really thought that I had a problem. I'd get home from a hard day at work, have a few drinks every day. Then the weekend would come and I would drink even more. I justified drinking by using it as a reward for running. I'd run 20 miles in the morning on Saturday and go home and get drunk that night and then get up the next day and do it all over again. My wife asked me to try slowing down in December of 2018. I fought a tooth and nail but now I've been sober for 14 months with no alcohol. Life has a way of testing you and that's another thing I learned on the trail. I was hurt at work shortly after I stopped drinking about three weeks later to be exact. Since then there's been a number of setbacks as shoulder surgery in July of last year with another shoulder surgery coming in the next month or so but I've been able to maintain staying sober this entire time. My most trying time was this past December, two days after my one year anniversary of sobriety when my brother was found after an overdose. He left a four year old daughter and a whole that will never be filled. So my goal for 2020 is to try and raise the final $20,000 of the $50,000 goal set at the beginning of enough is enough. That amount is roughly what it takes to get a sober house off the ground and up and running. In order to do that, I hope to be running a 250 mile race at Infinitus this May for my brother Tom. I'm gonna try and use this event to get the conversation back in the minds of our local community and leaders. But if you haven't already, please reach out to me, keep looking for upcoming showings of the documentary. It's called No Easy Mile. One cool thing that's happened in the last couple months is that PBS has contacted us and they've actually picked up No Easy Mile to show in the summer season of Made Here. It's a grouping of documentaries and videos that are made by local filmmakers on local issues. If anybody here has any questions, wants to talk to me in any way or has any way of helping out, please reach out before you guys head home today. I'll be around, just like everybody else. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for really a role model for all of us. Thank you. It's my pleasure now to bring up to the podium our colleague from the Upper Valley who will be giving out a very special award, Sheila Young. Sheila, let's hear it for Sheila Young. And I'm the executive director of the Upper Valley Turning Point in White River. And I'm touched by what I just heard and just want to say I'm sorry for your loss, Phil. And, but when we all hooded and hollered for your 14 months, I think that's, we're celebrating recovery, we're celebrating life. And that's really what happens here. We celebrate life. And so I too had to write a couple things. I want to thank everybody who's here. I want to thank the state for supporting us. And I as one of the 12 centers that exist in the state, you guys are my people. And I have had the opportunity to work with someone who really had a vision for his center and I recently went to the, or about a year ago to the grand opening of the new Turning Point center of Chittenden County. And that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And if you haven't visited, you probably ought to. They have space for, it's everything a center would want to be. There's space for art and for music and for meetings and for parents and for, and they do the emergency department. There's so much going on there and it is such a beautiful thing. But what I know is, is that without the people who come to the building, it's just a building just like our center. And what I've witnessed, it's really been my honor to witness and be a part of is the directors, well, this morning, I was sort of sitting on the edge and Gary, who you already saw at the beginning, as he walked past me, he tapped me. And I felt a kindness. I felt that and that's what I'm here to celebrate. I'm really honored to be able to give Gary this award for his leadership and for the work that he's done in Chittenden County and for recovery for the state, for all the centers. I, and Gary has some, I just love him and he has some beautiful qualities. And when I don't, I may not have ever said this to him, but when I'm not sure how to deal with something, I kind of sit and watch Gary. Because Gary knows what to do. I say, what would Gary do? But so I just want to honor Gary DeCarolis for his work at the Chittenden County Turning Point. A few notes, wrong notes. All right, let me see if I can get through this. Thank you, Shino. Thank you all. So I've had the honor of being the executive director of the Turning Point Center of Chittenden County for the last seven years. It's been amazing. You've allowed me into your lives in all kinds of different ways. I'm gonna feel very blessed by that. You may not know, but my, I'm a therapist by trade, although most of my career has been in human service administration. And so therapists tend to be sensitive to the little things in life, the little things in people's lives. I have to say after seven years, I've never met a group of people who are more insightful, more thoughtful, more deep than the people that I've met through my work in the recovery field. You're amazing. On top of that, I don't think I've ever met a group of people and I love coming into work every day because of this. With such talents, the music, the arts, writing, phenomenal people walk through our doors every single day. And half the time I'm serenaded by amazing guitar players and singers and poets and it's just a phenomenal thing and you get paid for it too. So thank you. Thank you all for that. Now, we've got a job to do whether I'm the executive director or not and I think Tim Ash talked a little bit about it and you probably, everyone in this room and others that are around the state have to take an extra measure of burden because we need to take ignorance and turn it into insight. We need to move people across the state to understand the illness that many people have to struggle with and see the beauty in every one of those people including everyone in this room and hundreds across the state. That's a challenge that we absolutely have to meet. We cannot walk away from that. And to me, it's a challenge that we can do. Vermont, as you know, is been the first in many things in this world. We last night celebrated one of our senators who was able to win a primary and move on to the national stage and front runner status in the Democratic Party. We are changed people. We are destined for some reason or another to make a difference where other states and other communities cannot do that. And I know that we can have a state that understands what's going on rather than sits in ignorance and makes judgment. And so we're all tasked with that in my mind to do that. Now, so when I've approached my work, I always, for some reason, I think my father gave me this little blessing, but he said, you know, whatever you do in life, if you wanna be a janitor, be the best janitor in the world. If you wanna be a carpenter, be the best carpenter in the world. Well, those weren't fields that I chose to take, but I approached my work and I talked to my other 11 colleagues around the state and all of you out there, is that whatever we do, it should be world-class. And when you do that, you can make amazing things happen. Now, are we always gonna be able to achieve everything we wanna achieve in life? Absolutely not. And we have to be good to ourselves when we don't achieve them, not beat ourselves over their head. So, there's a little quote that I think fits this situation, about a guy named Les Brown said it, that most people in organizations fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit. So aim high, go for it, and thank you. Thank you, Gary, you're a beautiful man. I'd like to bring up to the stage now another beautiful human being who will introduce a beautiful program, Nancy Bassett. Nancy, where are you? Nancy Bassett, everybody, come on, you can't hide from us. Hi, everyone. How are you this morning? Are you great? Nancy Bassett, and I'm a person in long-term recovery, which for me means I haven't picked up a drink or a drug for 20 years. Years in recovery, coming back to St. John'sbury, I got to know a great person named Bess O'Brien. And Bess O'Brien and Gary Miller after a few years started a wonderful program called Writers for Recovery. And Bess and Gary are here today because they have some people to read for us. They're gonna be great. Hello, everybody, how are you doing? Good morning. All right, I'm Bess, this is Gary, Writers for Recovery. Many of you out there, I recognize, who have been in our workshops over the last five years. This year is our fifth year. We're celebrating, we're gonna do some fun things this year to celebrate. Absolutely, yeah. Dance parties, you know, non-alcoholic. Yeah, raves, everything. Raves, everything. Everything, a parade. Yeah, we just wanna tell you a few things that we've done over the last year, and then we're gonna bring up some people to read some pieces that they've written in some of our workshops. So, I'll start. Last year, you may know, Writers for Recovery collaborated with the Vermont Public Radio to produce six podcasts focused on people in recovery. Many of them were also reading some of their work from the workshops. That was an extremely successful airing of those podcasts. And we were so thrilled because nearly 200,000 downloads across the country happened across the country. That's correct, yeah, that was great. That was cool. Yeah, we also did workshops. We usually do 10-week workshops, and we did workshops in Barry Hardwick, Rutland, Middlebury, St. John'sbury, correctional facilities in Rutland and Springfield. So, we were all over the state, and this year we've just added another workshop leader. So, we're gonna be in even more places for the coming year. You wanna talk about the outside? Yeah, sure. We had our first long-term workshop outside Vermont this year. I went down, I think, two years ago and trained eight people to be workshop leaders in the Adirondacks, and one of them started a Writers for Recovery group at Raybrook Federal Correctional Institute. So, that was our first workshop outside of Vermont. We also collaborated this year with Skrag Mountain Music to do this awesome program with seven or eight women from the Lund home. And what it is is Gary and I came in and we worked with these women to create original lullabies for their unborn children or their babies who had just been born. And we wrote the lyrics with them, and then Skrag Mountain came in and put them to music. And so, all of these women who were in recovery now have their own lullaby that they can sing to their children, which is just an amazing, wonderful thing. And Skrag Mountain did a concert where they sang all of the lullabies, and now these women have their own special lullaby for their children, so that was really cool. So, I already mentioned that thing. 2020 is our fifth year, so we wanna make it a little bit awesome. And as Beth said, we have a lot of events that are still in the planning stages. We're gonna continue to do great workshops. We're gonna do a special edition of our annual anthology, the book we publish. Greatest hits and new stuff. So, if you haven't gotten one, stay tuned for this year, it's gonna be really great. And for any of you out there who want to bring Writers Recovery to your Recovery Center, please go to our website, call us, email us. We love coming and working with you. And I'm doing my second year of Writers for Recovery workshops at Lund, so it doesn't have to be at Recovery Center. We've done workshops in libraries and schools and social service agencies. We also do trainings, so please think of us. We love you guys and gals, and we wanna work with you. And I shouldn't really say it out loud, but Writers for Recovery Ireland may be happening very soon. Someone reached out to us from the west coast of Ireland, a woman who attended our workshop in Middlebury, and we're trying to make that happen, so we may be international. Yeah, and finally we wanna just thank our major sponsors, the Vermont Department of Corrections, the Relina Jaffe Foundation, a number of individual donors, including Nat Winstrup. So, thank them all, and now we're gonna get to the really important part of our presentation. Our first reader is Jacqueline Joy. My name's Jacqueline Joy, and I'm someone who's in long-term recovery, and the Writers for Recovery group has been transformative this last year. I wrote this in our last session. It's for my father. If I had a chance, I would stop time and go back to May 1, 1961, 2.59 a.m. I would pull out all the favors I stored up and beg my guardian angels to sit on the car horn and blare Frank's sleeping body awake. I'd stop the car from slamming into the grand oak tree on Route 940, and I'd save the life of my father, John Norman Shovelin. 26 was an awfully early age to leave this world, and I guess you did everything on planet Earth you were meant to do. But I dream of a world where I had a loving father to teach me about men, music, and God. I dream of a world where abuse is the story I heard about as an adult rather than lived with every day. If I had a chance, I would stop time and make you mine, here in the flesh rather than there in spirit. I know I can talk to you and I can even hear you. But damn, if I could have stopped time, I would have been able to see you and lead into you and feel your heartbeat. And reading next is Nathan Merrill. I am Nate Merrill. This is titled, I Haven't Been Down This Road Before, and I just want to give a quick word about writers. One of my writings was, I think the prompt was something to do with, I can't remember, but one of my lines was, it's okay to be in a writing class and hate writing. And I stand by that sentiment. I've had periods in life where words were hard to come by because they felt dangerous, because the truth of experience felt unbearable. And writers for recovery has helped me feel, regain a sense of safety to express what's there. So I'm really grateful to them. I haven't been down this road before is a sentiment I would often refract in some way at the relative peak of some chemically induced trip, a drunkenness, a highness. I didn't used to be like this. I once told a lover with no memory of having done so as I slipped into unconsciousness. I hadn't been down this road before, I'd say, excitedly sometimes, wistfully sometimes, but always with a sense of long overdue entitlement, like I'd been robbed by whom I couldn't say, of a cultural right of youthful passage to freedom, from the inhibitions and fears of a muted self, from isolation. Where to now? Thanks. Our next reader is Besso Bryan, and she is reading for Cassandra Johnson. All right, one thing Gary and I didn't say is that when we do these workshops, we give people prompts and they have seven minutes to write. That's it. So everything you're hearing today was written in seven minutes, which is pretty miraculous. How to write for recovery by Cassandra Johnson. I could start by sharing my experience, strength, and hope, but I'm sure that's not what you wanna hear. Hearing this at many meetings before, there is so much more, the blood, sweat, and tears, the reality of addiction, the shakes, and bone aches, and restless legs, the real life shit one endures. Not so fun sounding, huh? The not being able to find a job, the not seeing your kids shit, because you burnt all your bridges, but didn't give up to lose hope shit. Shit shit, the never giving up shit. The anger inside, but smiles on at the outside. Let it be known that recovery isn't easy. How to write about recovery, there is no such rule. It's how you want it to be. This is your program, recovery is possible, and this is your time. Reading next is Gary Mett. I'm gonna read for a guy named Oscar Delgado, Jr., and he is in from the turning point of Chittenden County Writers Recovery Group, a piece called Nobody Really Knows. Nobody really knows how it happened. The friend, the lover, the fighter for your rights. Nobody really knows how he fell, where he went to. He would just disappear. Nobody really knows how it happened that someone so supportive, strong, kind, and gentle could be lost for 20 years. He came back once, twice, three times. Many really, but always disappeared. Nobody really knows how it happened. He was so broken, but thought he was fine. Nobody really knows how it happened. Now they see him, he smiles. Is it real this time? Nobody really knows the pain it caused, the lessons he's still learning, the tears he cries to God if only never comes out. It's gratitude now. Nobody really knows how it happened, how he woke from the nightmare. All they had to do was ask, God did, God knows, and there's a secret to his new self. Our next reader, our next reader is my buddy, Jeff Morris. I think I'm having an in the body experience. Anyway, don't forget to, thankful comes to mind. Followed by grateful, just full. The realizing of the fact that you must stay focused, aware, cognizant at least, went out and about. But it is good to not let it slide. Keep an eye on what is important and above all, don't forget to write, draw, care, walk, contribute, pray. The breathing is key. The just being is the thing. Aware, empathy, staccato, imbued, rhythm of rainbow, mining dawn, something like that. But I reckon, what it all boils down to is this, don't forget that you are loved and in turn, loved. Today's final reader taken at home is the indomitable Ashley Hickey. Hi, I'm Ash. So if I had a chance, if I had a chance, I would take it and go. And it starts with cutting the base, but not every base. Then new limbs will grow and bear fruit, but some stems must go and some trim. If I had a chance, I would just take it and go. Deeper, dig deeper, cut it and stack it, enjoy. Use the fire, watch that fire, let the warmth engulf you. Stack runs low, sharpen the blade, fill the oil and gas and go. If I had a chance, I would take it and go. Straight to the pond and soak. Swim to that rock, get on top. Feel the sun, cause I'm the best. And run, jump and swim faster than the leeches. Get out and take the chance. Now that was beautiful, thank you. Thank you to all our writers. Now we have an annual award that has really a great deal of meaning for the recovery community. We were talking earlier about the giants in recovery who's shoulders we are standing on. And one of those giants was Jack Berry. Jack was a prominent, prominent figure in Vermont's media community on the radio, on TV. He was a fierce advocate for public media. And he was also one of the first prominent Vermonters to be very open and proud of his recovery and of the recovery of his loved ones. So every year we give the Jack Berry award in honor of an individual or an organization who has done exceptional things in communicating the power of recovery. And this year we are delighted and moved and just overwhelmed with how powerful this series has been. And this year's award is going to the writer Kate O'Neill and to seven days for their series, Hooked Stories and Solutions from Vermont's Opioid Crisis. You have read any of this journalism, you know how powerful it is, how powerful it speaks to our condition here in Vermont and how it's been picked up nationwide as a important testament to this healthcare crisis. So here to accept the award on behalf of Kate on behalf of Kate and Seven Days is Kate's sister, Mora O'Neill and Kathy Resmer from Seven Days. We'd like them both to please come up and get their awards. Then I believe Mora will speak first and then Kathy. So Seven Days and Kate O'Neill. How do you like O'Neill, Kate's sister? She's so sorry she couldn't be here today and asked that I accept this award on her behalf. She did send some remarks, so I'll read those now. Thank you so much to Recovery Vermont for this award. In the course of the reporting I did last year, I spoke to many Vermonters who benefited from the work of this organization. People who received support from recovery coaches or regularly visited recovery centers. These services are crucial not just to people, not just to helping people achieve and maintain recovery by normalizing and supporting remission from substance use disorder. Recovery Vermont helps reduce the stigma and shame associated with this disease. So it's a special honor to be recognized by an organization that is having such a positive impact on people and in communities across the state. In recognizing the series I wrote last year, Recovery Vermont is recognizing the Vermonters who so generously shared their stories with me for that series and the story of my sister Maddie who died 16 months ago after struggling with substance use disorder for more than a decade. Seven days invited me to write the series that is being recognized today after the obituary I wrote for my sister went viral. So in a way, I'm being given this award as a result of my sister's death. On recovery day, we celebrate not just people who have achieved recovery, but the very possibility of recovery itself. Flyers advertising this event and with the sentence, recovery is possible, written in capital letters with two exclamation points at the end. This is something I believed fervently for the 12 years my sister struggled with substance use disorder. Until she took her last breath, I believed that recovery was indeed possible for Maddie. But last year as I reported the series that is being recognized today, I learned another saying, one I hadn't known when she was alive. You can't recover if you're dead. Addiction, okay, I'm a crier, so get ready. I know this award isn't for me, but I'll still cry while accepting it. Addiction is a dangerous, often deadly disease and my sister Maddie is one of hundreds, if not thousands of Vermonters with substance use disorder who die each year before they can recover. They die of overdose, they die in accidents, they die of infections, they die of despair. So though we've gathered today to celebrate recovery and support those who have achieved it, I asked on behalf of my sister and the many Vermonters who have died before they could recover that we support, celebrate and love both people who are in recovery and those who are not. I'm asking that we offer not just the tools to achieve recovery and support when people get there. I'm also asking that we offer the tools and support people need to stay safe when they are actively using drugs and alcohol, when recovery feels impossible, like a faraway dream. I'm asking that we not just support recovery centers but harm reduction services too. I'm asking that we advocate for housing and healthcare for people who are in recovery and those who are in the throes of their addiction. I'm asking that we love and support people who are actively struggling with their disease just as much as we love and support those who are in remission from it. 16 months after my sister died, I still believe that recovery is possible. The stories people have shared with me since her death and the many faces here today are proof. Recovery is possible but not if you're dead. The award I'm receiving today is named for a beloved Vermonter and advocate for people with addiction. According to the award description, Jack Berry was a man who quote, "'Reminded us all that individuals can "'and should speak out publicly on behalf of all Vermonters." This is what I'm asking of you today, that you speak out publicly on behalf of all Vermonters, those with substance use disorder who are in remission from their disease and those who are not. Thank you. Like Mora, I'm a crier too and it's, this is so powerful and inspiring what you're all doing here. And it's such an honor for seven days to be in this space with you today that you invited us here. I wanna, before I have some remarks too but before I launch into them, I just wanna recognize Paula Radley who's our seven days publisher and co-editor. She wishes she could be here. She was not able to join us this morning. But Paula actually conceived the series and fought for it and convinced everybody on our seven days leadership team that it was not only a good thing to do, it was a necessary thing to do. And it's the biggest project we've ever undertaken and it required more resources than anything we've ever done. So it was quite an effort. And I just, I wanna also recognize our underwriters for the series. So in addition, we've never actually gotten underwriters for an editorial project before but when we conceived of this idea and Kate agreed, we realized that we could use some support to do this for the year. And we were so fortunate in December before Kate even showed up on the job that the UVM Health Network and the Vermont Community Foundation and Palmer Lowe Real Estate and Ernie Palmer Lowe supported this series, just the idea of it they supported it and financially. And it wouldn't have been possible without that help to defray the costs. So I wanna recognize them. And if you know them, thank them. Cause this wouldn't, I'm not sure this could have happened without them. So, oh and I also wanna mention that it's an honor for us to receive this award named for the legendary Vermont broadcaster, Jack Berry. From what I gather, he understood the responsibility that we in the media have to be prepared and to do our homework and to get it right. To put, and he also understood the power that we in the media can have to shape stories and to put things into context. And we take all that very seriously at seven days. So as I said, this series was different from anything we've done before. Usually journalists avoid writing about subjects they're close to. In this case, we just follow, thought this would be a good fit because Kate was close to it. And just so you know, just more I mentioned the obituary that brought this about. I just wanted to share a little background of what that was like at seven days when this was happening. When we initially published that obituary, it was immediately apparent to us what a powerful piece of writing it was. We knew Kate, but we hadn't known Maddie. And Kate made us feel her loss. Other people obviously felt the same way. And they sure sharing it on social media, we could see that. You probably know this, but four million people eventually read that obituary over the course of just a few days. Now if you're in New York City, four million people, oh yeah, that's no big deal. Vermont, that's like a big deal, four million people. And it was being shared all over the country. And you know, when something goes viral online, which I'm sure all of you have the experience of reading comments online. And when something goes viral, people say terrible things online that they would never say to someone's face. And you know, we allow negative comments on stories that we publish. We have a different standard when it comes to paid obituaries. And we, you know, I was, I'm on the digital team and I was, as we were started to see all this traffic, you know, I stayed up all night just thinking like, I gotta, if there's a comment that comes in, that's bad. We've gotta, we've gotta get rid of that. I do not want anyone seeing that. And I was bracing for the response that I knew everything that in my experience is told me was coming. But of the more than 1000 comments we received, we had to delete only seven of them. So that response was completely different from anything that you would have been led to expect. And what was even more remarkable was that the comments came, not only that they came from all over, what was really remarkable to me was that they were all so personal and specific. And they all, many of them were very similar in that they described someone who had lost a loved one, someone who was still struggling, someone who, we had people say, I just lost my daughter yesterday. And to be on the receiving end of that and watching this come in, you know, I know, I know about the opioid crisis. You know, we've been writing about it at seven days for years. I myself have written about Training Point and Gary and the work that you all do. And we wrote about that program that Bess and Gary just talked about, the Scrag Mountain Music Lullaby Program. We wrote about that in Kids Remark. We were writing all kinds of stories and winning journalism awards and even sparking legislative change. But none of that had gotten the response that this got, that these stories got. And when I was reading these comments, I was just, I was struck, I was like, this is something I haven't seen before, all these people speaking out in this way, in this space. And it was really incredible. So, you know, we thought two things. It was clear to us that there are more stories to tell and that because of this tragedy, Kate might be able to tell them in a way that people could hear. I think Gary talked about, he talked about moving people to understand and seeing the beauty in people. You can intellectually understand all this stuff, but when you read someone's personal story and you can empathize, you understand it in your heart, understand it in a different way. And that's what these stories and these personal stories are doing. Amazingly, when we approached Kate about this, she was willing to take this journey with us and to combine her personal story with additional reporting about the history and causes of the epidemic of all the systems that her sister had been through. And this journey was not easy. In addition to getting up to speed on this beat and reporting and writing these very complicated stories, Kate was grieving her sister. I can't imagine what that was like for her. But she is just so amazing. You know, she faced that with this unflinching honesty and courage and wrote about what she'd learned and reconsidered in the stories, her own actions from the past. And, you know, her courage and willingness to do that encouraged all of us, her readers, and even us at Seven Days, our editors, to examine our own actions. And I'll tell you, this series didn't just change the way that our readers were seeing these stories. They were also changing the way that we as the media, as people who didn't have necessarily a personal connection to this, it really changed the way that we saw these stories that we were writing. You know, so one of the things that came out of this whole experience is that the series is over. But we did start the All Our Hearts Project. There's a table out in the hall. We thought that if one story could do this, one person's story could do this, think of what other stories could do, more stories. And remembering those who we've lost and all the people who aren't able to be with us here today. Those stories have power. And we invite you to share them with us. We're giving away at the table some handmade hearts. We asked participants who'd shared stories about their loved ones through the All Our Hearts Project. We invited them to a workshop where they made clay hearts for their loved ones that they'd lost, imprinted with the website address, allourhearts.com. This is one of them I carry with me about Angela, Bowser Camilletti. Angela, remember her, says in the back. And we passed out a couple hundred of these stones at a reception in Burlington in December. And we're gonna continue doing this and handing these out. It's one way to keep these going. And I, the name All Our Hearts came from a line in Kate's obituary for Maddie, which I'm gonna leave you with. She's beautiful. It's Kate, right? If you yourself are struggling from addiction, know that every breath is a fresh start. Know that hundreds of thousands of families who have lost someone to this disease are praying and rooting for you. Know that we believe with all our hearts that you can and will make it. It is never too late. We believe that too. And thank you for the work that you're doing here at Recovery in Vermont. And please keep sharing your stories. Oh, it's not for me. One second, folks. I'm Peter Mallory. I'm a person in long-term recovery and honored to be here today with all of you who make this screen for me all the time. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I also am gonna be joined by Daniel Franklin, who's the director of the North Central Recovery Center. Did I get that right? North Central, Vermont, yes. North Central, Vermont Recovery Center in Morrisville. Welcome, Daniel. I usually get the chance to do the Legislative Champion Award, and I get that chance again today with Daniel's help. And our champion today is, and I'll let the cat out of the bag since he already knows, is David Yacovoni, representative from Witchtown, David. Morrisville. Morrisville. I wanted to say a few general words. David and I served in the legislature together, along with Jack Berry, do you remember? Or was he gone by the time you got there? Yeah, I thought he was. That's how old we are. And Dave has done so many different things. I was gonna try to read some of them to you. He graduated from Johnson State, spent his 40-year career in Vermont, working in health and human services at the local and state level. Professional career included working as a licensed nursing home administrator for 16 years and in various roles in Vermont state government, including commissioner of aging and disabilities in the dean administration and as commissioner for children and families in the Shumland administration. He's been active in community affairs for many years, including a combined 30 years of civic experience as a town moderator. I didn't know you did that. I do that. Select board member, school board member, justice of the peace, planning commissioner. His past community service work includes serving as trustee for community health services of Lemoyle Valley, Lemoyle Home Health, Lemoyle Mental Health and Copley Hospital. He currently serves as a trustee for the Manor Nursing Home. Dave served in the Vermont General Assembly, representing Hyde Park and Wilkett from 1993 to 96. And that's when we were there together. And then after doing all of those amazing things, he had the audacity to return to the legislature. And he now serves on the Appropriations Committee in the house. And he is a very dear friend to what we do and the issues that we work on. And I just wanted to make sure that we had a chance to honor him. I think of him as a dear friend as well. And Daniel works with him now. And I thought it would be nice if Daniel would say a few words before we turn it over to Dave. As you can tell from what Peter said, Dave Yacobini has accomplished a lot in his life and helped a lot of people. His impact continues to reverberate in communities throughout Vermont. As his wife, Debbie, wrote to me, Dave's whole career has been about serving others and helping people in need to fight poverty, illness and addiction. In 2002, he helped to secure funding to establish the first two recovery centers in Vermont. But Debbie added, what defines Dave is not so much what we know he does for others, but the things he does for others that we do not know about. On the one hand, this is totally fitting considering Dave's remarkable humility and kindness, which go along with his generosity and his patience. I have no doubt that it's true that there's a lot that Dave does that we don't see. On the other hand, it makes me wonder how he finds the time because there's a lot we do see. Dave seems to be everywhere. Somehow, whether it's a holiday party or an open house at the recovery center or a local nonprofit's annual meeting or one of his rockstar son Seth's gigs or a trivia night with his team, which I think is called the Brainiacs, or at a public forum, Dave is a cherished and omnipresent force for good in our region. When we were working with V4 to open a women's recovery residence, not only did Dave show up at the development review board to support us when other neighbors showed up to keep us out. But he said to me, when everyone's settled in, let me know and I'll bring over a pie or a lasagna. I'm personally, I want to thank you for your support for me and our recovery center from day one, Dave, and which says nothing about me and everything about you and your generous spirit. I want to thank you on behalf of our community and it's our honor to thank you for your support for the recovery centers and the people they serve and for your care for the most vulnerable people in our state throughout your distinguished career by recognizing you as the 2020 legislative champion. Thank you, I'll be brief. I told Peter that that sounded like my obituary, I don't have to write it now. But I would mention my family too. I will be brief. It's been said before, but I think Bear is repeating. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. The Constitution does not compel us to house the homeless, to feed the hungry or help the hopeless. We do these things because our moral compass points in the direction of kindness. Each of us, each of us probably has our own idea of what government should or should not be. Mine is not that complicated. I simply believe whenever we can to pay it forward. Thank you for giving me that opportunity. Thank you. I know that we have Commissioner Levine scheduled but I'm sure he's on his way here. So we will go next to our first group of speakers talking about our theme this year. Our theme is Vermont recovers together. It recovers in families, it recovers among friends, it recovers in our recovery centers and it also recovers in the many partnerships and supports that we have throughout the community. One of the best practices and most hopeful practices that we've been hearing about in our shop over the past couple of years has been the tremendous work that Tracy and her colleagues in Rutland have been doing with their local correctional facility and with the leaders there. Really developing recovery supports in the facility itself and then in seeing that handoff as individuals re-enter their communities. It's kind of a special program. So before we hear from Dr. Levine, we'd love to hear about this great work being done in Rutland. So Tracy and your team, if you can come up here, where is Tracy? There she is, come on everybody. Thank you. Tracy you are so wonderful. Well thank you. You did so much hard work. So are you. Lucky to have you. Good morning. It's an honor to be here. I'm so grateful to see everybody here and I get to talk about a program that we do at our center that I'm extremely proud of and that I have a great passion for. In June of 2016 we started, I think it was part of a grant that we had with Westridge where the Pathways guys were working 10 hours with the hubs to provide, it was like an MAT integration grant. And our Pathways guide had the ability to start expanding groups and she started doing them in their correctional facility in Marble Valley Correctional Facility. Unfortunately that kind of fell away but I was doing some of the groups with her myself and I realized that we needed to continue those groups. We were doing making recovery easier and smart recovery in the jail twice a week and our hope was to provide connection for people that were housed in the facility and to let them know that we were there for them when they got out. And that we wanted to support them. And we continued doing the group. We had no funding for the program, we just kept doing it. And we started doing some coaching. And then in 2018 we ended up getting the Bowes Health Trust grant in our community for three years which helped us expand that program. So now we have groups at the jail. We have recovery coaching that goes on three days a week in the jail. We also work with probation and parole. We provide groups and coaching to people in DOC transitional housing like in Mandela and Sanctuary House. Homeless Prevention Center, they have DOC Apartments so we provide support for those individuals. We're part of adult treatment court. We also do lots of groups for Serenity House. We're hoping to get involved with Federal Drug Court. And I mean we're just like shit, we're everywhere. We're in their faces, you know. And that repeated contact builds trust. And you know, Tanya, my right hand woman at the center, she was the one who was doing the groups with me for a while at the jail. It was her and I, and we're an immense facility. But the respect that we got was amazing. And there was no crossing boundaries. Not to say some didn't try, but you know, didn't happen. So some statistics from our program. Recovery Coaching, we've provided to 115 unique individuals within the correctional facility itself. And there's 16 unique individuals who continued to be engaged since they were released. That's amazing. We've served through our smart recovery meetings in and outside of the facility. We've served 365 unique individuals, making recovery easier in and out of the facility. 342 unique individuals. And I think one of the biggest things, we kind of follow people with our grant funding. We have them do surveys, assessments of recovery capital. And we track them, we try to get those monthly. As you can realize, it's kind of hard. Sometimes when somebody gets released, they don't have phones, they don't have, it's hard to find them to do this. But of the 100, 67 of them have not been convicted of new charges. And based on that, the average cost of incarceration is $67,000 a year. So this is a cost savings and a reduced reduction recidivism of 4,489,000. Feed is there. I mean, individuals and corrections, you know. I mean, what I came to realize, I've never been incarcerated myself. But I know that there's, you know, the stigma. If you're an addict, if you're a felon, nobody expects anything more of you. They need to be seen as human people and to see their potential. And to see people that have people in their lives that just look at them as people. We all struggle, you know. We all struggle every day. And it's just amazing. And I have to say one of our goals was to, some of these people we served while they're incarcerated was to eventually have them become recovery coaches when they get out. And I've had my first one. And he's sitting over there and is Andrew Pelletier. You know, it's just such a wonderful thing when you see people grow and change and start to believe in themselves and have faith in them. It's, we need to be there. We need to be in corrections. We need to be everywhere where people are that are struggling and, you know, the judgment has gotta be gone. Stigma's gotta be gone. These are people's brothers, fathers, you know. And they can do it. And their stories of what they've been through are what's gonna give the hope to the next person that's struggling. So we need to really work hard to help these people transition when they get out of jail. You can't just give somebody a business card and say go down to Turning Point Center. Because if they don't know the people there, they're not gonna trust them and they're not gonna go. So build that trust so they feel safe when they come in. I also want to have Robert Blaze who actually engaged with our program while he was incarcerated. He's been in adult treatment court. He's getting ready to graduate soon. With recovery coaching since he's been out. So I'm gonna have him share some of his experience. All right, thank you. Well, this is nerve-wracking. Biggest crowd I've spoken in front of. Yeah, like Tracy said, you know, been in and out of jail pretty much my whole adult life. Last time I was in there, getting emotional. Last time I was in there, you know, I asked myself what I was doing wrong. And I had to, you know, finally come to terms that I was unadded. And every time I've ever been in trouble when I've gone to jail was because of addiction or alcohol. And I would walk by Tanya and Tracy's meetings and while I was in jail, as I'd go to the rec room, one day I decided to go in and that turned my life around for the good. It was ever since then that I knew I had to do something about this problem. So as I'm not knowing what's going on with my fate and, you know, in jail and stuff, I asked around and I heard about the Rutland County Treatment Corridor. And I asked my lawyer to please sign me up for it. This is what I needed in my life. And as I'm in it, like Tracy said, I'm gonna be graduating in six days. And, but it's been one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in life. You know, as much as hell have I been through. I've got a lot of, I've been very successful. I'm a lead foreman for a construction company. I drive a brand new company truck. I have two brand new vehicles. So it's very, you put your mind to anything you can do it. And, you know, I think Tony and Tracy so much because they've been so much part of my life in the Rutland Treatment Corridor as well. I was supposed to graduate back in July. Somebody touched on this earlier. And I thought I was ready, but alcohol came into my life. And I thought I had, oh, it's just drinking, you know, no big deal. And as I celebrate 27 months and three days from heroin, I also celebrated four months from drinking yesterday. And this was, you know, I love coming up here. This makes my third year in a row. The first time I got to speak in front of people. And today just happens to be my 40th birthday as well. It's very, very humbling, very gratifying. And just as I look around the room and I see all the support that us addicts really have out there that we didn't realize we had before. And, you know, to the addicts, to the parents, to the grandparents, to the daughters, the sons, the brothers, the sisters, one of the important things that you should always mention to your loved ones, make sure you tell them you're proud of them. I was 38 years old before my father ever told me that. And it stuck with me ever since. And it was a big turn point in my recovery. It took recovery to hear my father tell me he was proud of me. Just keep that in mind. Because, you know, as addicts sometimes we don't think people care. And that's one of the biggest fights we have. So I just want to thank everybody for being here. I want to thank the Rutland turning point. And Clay Gilbert, part of the treatment court team, he's been a big help too. It was an honor. Have a good day.