It is my dream that Hope for NH Recovery can continue

To The Daily Sun,

As some of you may have heard, the Franklin Hope for Recovery center is closing at the end of the month due to financial constraints in order to keep the Manchester location sustainable. Apparently, the funding streams to keep the Franklin location open did not materialize as envisioned. Plus, the Manchester center was covering expenses for the satellite centers in Franklin, Concord, Claremont and Berlin. I spoke with Mike Fitzpatrick the other day and he told me that the drop-in center has been a lifesaver for the hundred or more addicts who are waging the difficult battle to stay clean and sober.

Mike, of course, is the individual I wrote a letter about last September. Mike informed me that he is very close to securing a 501(c)3 nonprofit status for his Belknap County registered business entitled The Grateful Café and Sober Club. He has hosted numerous sober dances and family fun concerts both outside in the summer and at the center. Unfortunately, as of March, there will be no drop-in center for both addicts and their family members. This is a heartbreaking and crushing loss for all those who have benefited from this invaluable resource to the community. Especially during a time when the drug crisis continues on unabated, causing more deaths and tearing apart more families.

My work involves working with children who have been displaced and living in foster homes and with extended family members. Most of the displacements are a result of drug addiction, and, sadly, many children are unable to reunite with their birth parents. However, I can testify to the fact that some do recover and are able to get their children back with them. It is only through the efforts of organizations like Hope for New Hampshire Recovery that success does take place. Why are these places so necessary and life giving? As Andrew Sullivan notes in his brilliant column in New York magazine, "Opioids are just one of the ways Americans are trying to cope with an inhuman new world where everything is flat, where communication is virtual, and where those core elements of human happiness — faith, family, community — seem to elude so many."

This country needs to find its way back to those core elements, and that is one of the existential battles of our time. But in the meantime, we need these recovery outlets now for folks to access an oasis, away from the mind altering and mind numbing allure of drugs, and especially opiates. This letter is a clarion call to all public servants and business leaders to marshal the necessary resources to keep open these vital, life saving and life giving outlets for those who desperately search for any place where there is hope for a reason to continue on with their so very difficult and traumatized, earthly existence.

For those who wonder why these lost souls reach for the drugs that cause them so much misery, beyond the brief respite of drug-induced euphoria, here is another quote from the Andrew Sullivan post: "It may be best to think of this wave therefore, not as a function of miserable people turning to drugs en masse, but of people who didn't realize how miserable they were until they found out what life without misery could be. To return to their previous lives became unthinkable. For so many, it still is."

It is my hope and dream, as it is Mike Fitzpatrick's hope and dream, that the Hope for NH Recovery mission can continue to nourish and offer hope for all these individuals and their families. It can only do so in our area if the powers that be understand the scope of this tragic crisis of addiction and make it a primary focus to coalesce and find a way to reopen a center in the Franklin/Tilton/Northfield area. Please, please pass this word along to your congressmen and women and to your community businesses. It truly is a life and death matter.

Russ Wiles

Tilton