40 Ways in 40 Days: Remembering the Survivors of Katrina (Day 19)

Plaid Adder

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Fri Mar-24-06 01:45 PM
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40 Ways in 40 Days: Remembering the Survivors of Katrina (Day 19)

Edited on Fri Mar-24-06 01:48 PM by Plaid Adder

Day 19, Way 19

This weekend a good friend of mine is celebrating his 5-year sobriety anniversary. In his honor, and in a spirit of profound gratitude toward all the people who have supported him in his recovery, I decided to find something we all could do to help Katrina survivors who are in recovery or who want to be in recovery. Once again, I discovered that it's more complicated than it looks.

Early media coverage of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans circulated stories about addicts making armed assaults on hospitals in search of drugs, committing rapes and murders in the Superdome, looting and pillaging in the streets, and so on. And indeed, the hurricane brought into sharp and painful focus the fact that when you combine poverty with a tourism industry organized around getting people shitfaced, what you get is a major addiction problem. It is a problem that resists solution, too, both in the acute aftermath and in the long term. For instance, if you are running a shelter, what do you do about people who turn up so drunk, so high, or so strung out that they won't or can't follow basic ground rules? Well, if you're the Red Cross, you could always put up a sign like this:

I found that image at HopeNetworks, an online clearinghouse for recovery information in Louisiana. HopeNetworks appears to be almost exclusively focused on alcohol abuse, and as on JoinTogether, another recovery site I checked out, it is clear that there is some tension between the Red Cross and the recovery community. On September 11 2005, the national office of the Red Cross put out a memo directing RC shelters to allow abuse counselors and 12-step programs access to their evacuees. Apparently, they hadn't been doing that up to that point. On the one hand, I can see why the Red Cross might get uptight about making sure the people they allow to counsel their clients are actually counselors and not, say, dealers; on the other hand, I can also see how that approach would create serious problems for people involved in something like Alcoholics Anonymous. Many people recovering through AA need to go to meeting every day. If you're stuck in a shelter for a week and they won't let anyone come in to run a meeting, that's a major problem.

But if you want to see a real feud within the treatment community, check out this blog put together by a team from the Chicago Recovery Alliance. As Katrina was brewing itself out in the Gulf, the CRA was just putting together its Mobile Opiate Substitute Therapy (MOST) program. The CRA's website is titled "Any Positive Change," and their philosophy incorporates "harm reduction," which basically means teaching addicts how to take their drugs in a less self-destructive way. MOST is basically about providing addicts with substitute drugs like methadone, which will stave off the craving/withdrawal symptoms but not do them the kind of damage that, say, heroin does. Not everyone in the recovery/treatment community thinks this is necessarily a good idea, but the folks at CRA are committed to it, and when Katrina hit they decided to take their new MOST mobile unit on its maiden voyage to the Gulf Coast. What follows is a fascinating story of regional antagonism (the phrase "Yankee go home" becomes something of a refrain, though it's not clear whether that was actually what was going on or whether the Yankees are projecting a tad), ideological friction, institutional competition, missionary zeal thwarted, and a frustrated group of Chicagoans driving back to the windy city with the sense of a mission still not accomplished.

Well, here's a story that's a little more encouraging, and it's my pick for today:

Odyssey House

Odyssey House is a private therapeutic community established in New Orleans in 1973 to treat substance abuse. It is located in a historic building on North Tonti street which has a long and very interesting history. It was originally founded by one Thomy Lafon, who according to the website

was born a free person of color in New Orleans, in the year of 1810, to Modest Foucher Lafon and Pierre Laralde Lafon A bachelor, he shared his home with his widowed sister, Alice Bodin. and a remained a strong supporter of charitable institutions throughout his life. In 1842, Lafon was listed in the New Orleans City Directory as a merchant on 387 Rampart Street, and from 1868 until his death, was a highly regarded and successful real estate broker. Thomy Lafon is primarily known not for the fortune he amassed during his lifetime, but for his open-hands, color-blind philanthropies. He made large contributions to the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Underground Railroad, the Catholic Institute for the Care of Orphans, the Louisiana Asylum, the Eye/Ear/Nose/and Throat Hospital, New Orleans University, Southern University, Straight University, the Shakespeare Alms Home, the Societe des Jeunes Amis, Charity Hospital (for the benefit of the ambulance service), the Religious Order of the Holy Family, the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Lafon Old Folks Home, and left an estate of nearly $600,000 to charitable institutions. During the Civil War, Lafon became active in politics, helping to found the Friends of Universal Suffrage, an interracial organization committed to universal male suffrage. Almost immediately after his death in 1893, the Louisiana State Legislature voted to honor him in memoriam, despite racial discrimination so virulent at the time, and Lafon was honored with a bust in the Louisiana State Capitol.

Odyssey House's approach, again according to their history page, uses "psychosocial methodology to foster personal growth in contrast to the use of methadone as a treatment plan." So, no doubt they wouldn't have been any more friendly to the CRA MOST folks than their arch-nemesis Choices of Louisiana; but it does appear that the Odyssey House people are knocking themselves out providing services and finding answers for Katrina survivors. FEMA just gave them $3 million as part of its better-late-than-never Katrina Aid Today initiative, and they appear to be expanding beyond substance abuse to related social services such as running a free medical clinic and supporting case workers helping survivors negotiate the recovery red tape.

Odyssey House was damaged during Katrina but it reopened in November. (Their administrative offices had to move to Baton Rouge and they're still there.) It's getting a lot of support through the United Way and other philanthropic organizations; but if you'd like to contribute your widow's mite, you can donate to them too.

A major disaster like Katrina is hard on anyone. It is particularly hard on people in recovery, who are supported among other things by the stability generated by whatever their treatment/therapeutic/recovery routine is. To be uprooted, plunged into chaos, separated from your recovery community, and then resettled somewhere new and have to construct a support system all over again is a tremendous challenge for a recovering addict, and it is important to do what can be done to make it easier for recovering addcits to stay sober and stay healthy. I don't know most of the people who helped my friend get his life and himself back five years ago, but I will always owe them a great debt for doing it; and I hope this will in a small way help some other people do that for someone else's friend.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder