Our Stories
Share the power of long-term recovery. If you are in recovery, a family member, friend or ally of someone in recovery, we want to hear your recovery story!
Learn more...
Faces & Voices of Recovery's book page
has information on many of the growing number of recovery-related publications. It’s a work in progress, so please let us know of other books that you think we should include. Check it out!
|
Recovery in the News
One more river to cross
Eric Robinson
The Columbian News
September 5, 2006
Trucks roared past on one side, causing the narrow sidewalk to shudder beneath their feet. On the other side, across a thin, waist-high railing, the Columbia River beckoned far below.
What would possess 1,700 men, women and children to endure this?
Compared with recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, participants in the fifth annual Hands Across the Bridge event described their foray onto the Interstate 5 Bridge at noon Monday as a walk in the park. At the sounding of a horn from a Tidewater Barge Lines tugboat, the group held a silent prayer and then tossed flowers into the river.
Organizer Patty Katz said the annual event, which kicks off National Recovery Month, has grown every year since it started with 200 participants in 2002.
"It started with the idea that our disease doesn't bring us under the bridge dying, but onto the bridge living," said Katz, a board member for the bistate Recovery Association Project. "We're not stopping and dying here. We're walking on to recovery."
Tim Jones, who described himself as a methamphetamine addict who has been clean for three-and-a-half years, remembers watching the event three years ago while on a break from his job at one of the riverfront restaurants in Vancouver.
"I was able to join them for the prayer from down there," Jones said. "And you could just feel the energy coming off the bridge."
On Monday, a human chain representing 3,706 collective years of sobriety formed across two-thirds of a mile linking recovering addicts in Washington to those in Oregon.
"It brings everybody together as one," said Russell Alfaro, a Washington state probation officer who endured his own struggles with abuse. "Basically, it's a big support system."
Alfaro regularly deals with addicts discharged from jail or prison, struggling with physical symptoms of withdrawal and a lack of institutional support. He said Monday's event not only unites people in recovery, but it brings together organizations with the wherewithal to help.
"This is wonderful," he said. "I wish we could do this once a month."
Katz makes it no secret that her organization is looking for publicity, both to sway policymakers about the importance of recovery programs and to show other addicts and alcoholics that they are not alone. She said she was gratified by the attendance of Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard, state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver, Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart and drug court Judge Diane Woolard.
She mused over the call she didn't make to area news outlets.
"'Oh, my God. The mayor, the senator and the county commissioner are on the bridge with 1,000 drug addicts and we don't know what's going to happen!'" she said. "They would have been here with helicopters."
©2006 Columbian.com. All Rights Reserved