Addiction: A Story of Stigma, A Story of Hope | Scott McFadden | TEDxColoradoSprings

As I tried to understand my long journey of substance use, I realized that its roots took shape long before I took a drug. I remember I was 13 years old. I ran away from home with my friend Michael. Sorry, we didn't. I didn't get very far, I stayed in the neighborhood, but I managed to stay out for a couple of weeks sleeping in people's basements in an abandoned car and one night in a park I finally got tired, cold and hungry and came home and when I came home it wasn't there. They didn't hit me like my friend Michael, they actually hugged me, my mom hugged me and cried, she asked me not to do that again.

I must tell you for my part that this was miraculous, there were no hugs in our house, no expressions of affection or affection. I hadn't heard the words I love you and I didn't hear it men, but I knew that was what she was trying to say, even though she didn't have the emotional vocabulary to express it, but in my young teenage mind there was another message. Walking by what I heard was oh, this is how I get love. I need to behave, run away and get attention, so I started running away more, acting sick, leaving school, getting into fights at school and then at 15 I found this completely new and exciting. way to get attention.

Some friends from high school introduced me to meth, we shot it and I immediately fell in love. It's so incredibly good, so good, that I thought, "Well, I'll have fun over the summer." this all summer when the summer is over I'll go back to school maybe doing this on the weekends didn't work out that way but by the time I was 16 I had tried every drug imaginable, maybe birth control pills and I was I was so overwhelmed by the drugs I was doing that I had to drop out of school, I couldn't keep up with school for another year and by then I was completely addicted to heroin and headed to prison.

Know? And let me intervene here. You know, something happens when a person starts down that path of drug use, the type of training starts with society in general, where you first get wrapped up in all these labels, drug addict, loser, liar, thief, manipulator and all the others that you get. surroundings reinforce these labels, everything you see on television, from late night drug busts. from the news to dramatic movies that glorify drug use and things like Breaking Bad and your family, your friends, law enforcement teachers, those labels are also reinforced because that's how we've come to view

addiction

for years.

More than a hundred years, we have seen it. as a crime and the only treatment a person could expect was incarceration, so at 17 I was with someone who had stolen a purse for $3, excuse me, I hid a syringe in my pocket, so I ended up with a year in prison for those charges combined and as luck would have it, it wasn't just any prison. I entered Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio. It is one of the two worst prisons in the state. In fact, it was built just after the Civil War. It has the largest cell block in the world.

My pavilion was six stories high. and 50 Cells a long time ago, you may have seen it on the redemption rack, they film a lot of movies there because it's kind of a creepy castle-like place. It turned out to be the worst year of my life, so I decided while I was there, okay? I won't use again as long as I live because I thought, like a lot of people, this is just a matter of willpower and I can grit my teeth and be stronger than this, so they gave me parole after a year. and it took me only a few hours to put a needle in my arm and my first thoughts were: am I stupid or crazy?

I was so confused by my own behavior that I knew I very sincerely wanted this recovery. Yes, my feet walked fine. to the drug and then the labels kicked in I guess I'm just an addict and a loser I guess they're right, you see the labels were doing what labels do, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy I was becoming the label, but in a very real sense, really. In reality, I was still that child running away in search of love and I don't think that's much different than most people who are trapped in this very powerful and confusing illness.

It may seem like they don't care, but the truth is. It's that they've just lost control and they don't know how to get out of it and deep in their heart they want to be held back and this could all be over, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, we're losing another person every 11 minutes right now. opioid crisis, even though we have some very effective medications and treatments available, only 10% of people who really need help are trying to get it and the biggest obstacles preventing them from doing so are labels. A shame. and

stigma

,

stigma

, the word that we hear a lot these days in the mental health and

addiction

space, but I know that I, for one, didn't fully understand the full meaning of that word until I went and looked it up, you know. .

The definition is that it's a mark of disgrace, its grace is a pretty powerful word and when you're marked in disgrace like The Scarlet Letter, it's like saying you're no longer welcome in our community, you're no longer part of our group, you know? ? part of our family when they used to use that word when they started using that word back in the 1590s in England a stimulus a stigma was an actual mark that was tattooed on a person to let people know they were a criminal or a traitor or an adulterer and sometimes for mental health problems and then they began to brand him as a person with a hot iron so that he would be shamed for the rest of his life.

Fortunately, we don't brand people these days, at least not with a hot iron. We use a criminal record, the person can be arrested for drug possession, forging prescriptions, basically getting and using more drugs to satisfy the cravings of the illness, but we still treat the illness as a crime instead of a medical problem, so which raises the question of why we stigmatize. This particular disease we treat differently than any other disease and part of the reason, according to the American Association of Addiction Medicine, is a chronic brain disease, so that's where we have to look, so part of the confusion lies in the dopamine reward system.

It is a neurotransmitter, it is a kind of chemical messenger in the brain, but in a practical sense, dopamine is that chemical substance that makes us feel good and that is activated to motivate us to repeat certain behaviors that are important for our survival and success, so when you have a really good meal, ice. -cold water on a very hot day maybe you got a promotion at work and the boss tells you how amazing you are, we are very lucky to have that feeling that there is dopamine and your brain tells you that everything you just did is Importantly, get on with it.

Behavior now dopamine levels are all important to understanding this dynamic dr. Corey Waller has done a very good job of delineating those levels, so on a normal day, having enough dopamine in your system to motivate you to get out of bed, get to work, and go about your business, that's about 50 nanograms per cent per liter. then you have those days where you might be depressed or you might be sick and you're not going to be able to work, it's down to about 40 nanograms there, so we all have those really great days, a perfect day, it's like 77 degrees and it's sunny. it could be hiking in the Rocky Mountains or lying on a beach somewhere, you won a small lottery, you want some tickets for Ted, whatever your perfect day is, that's the future dopamine level up to about a hundred, your system hasn't managed go beyond that, now go back there to That day I took that first shot of meth that sent my dopamine level up to Serg 1100 nanograms.

You can imagine how amazing heroin and other opioids feel high in the 1890s, so the brain at that point has been tricked and hijacked and believes that because the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area have been flooded with dopamine, it believes. that this is an important behavior and it motivates you to continue with that behavior and then other parts of the brain come into action, particularly important is your frontal cortex, this is the manager, this has to do with rational thought impulse control, judging the good from the bad, that goes out of commission along with your reward system, there goes your willpower and good decision making, but when I got out of prison at eighteen and relapsed immediately, I continued using for decades until approximately Eighty or eighteen twenty years ago, I was a homeless person sleeping on someone's kitchen floor in downtown Cincinnati with my girlfriend at the time I was on the top ten most wanted list in Cincinnati for forging prescriptions and violation of probation.

He had already served time in Cincinnati. three different states at that time twice for the federal government I had hepatitis C not surprising I was contemplating suicide there wasn't much

hope

at the time obviously my attempt failed I really was but when I got out this time something different happened they introduced me at that point what they now call medication assisted treatment, methadone, at first very briefly was not working for me, then there was a new medication at the time called suboxone buprenorphine, so I started this medication. I must take it for myself. It was such a drastic measure. change I'm literally from one day to the next one day I was the hardest and most out of control person with an addiction the next day I said I was stable I was motivated and I was surprised in a couple of weeks I had a small telemarketing job now that in itself It was a great thing that was a turning point the most important thing was that it introduced me to a whole new circle of people but I was able to start making human connections because that is the essence of recovery that allowed me to begin to overcome the unbearable student that a addict feels the isolation that was brought on by the ice, the labels, the shame and the stigma, and it is especially important to note that I entered that job without labels, without sharing who I was until people got to know me and then I started experimenting with new labels, suddenly I was the hard worker, the good salesman, I was the skydiving guy, I was the vegetarian because for some strange reason you stopped eating meat before I quit drugs, so I shot myself. heroin, but heaven.

It is forbidden to give you red meat, right? and addicts think, so this is good news. We have some medications and treatments that can help us change this and save some lives. The problem is that the stigma extends to medications and people hear things like Oh, that's it. just another crutch that you don't want to do, that's just another addiction and you know if you start you're not really in recovery but it's very underused and we keep losing people when treatments are available see if the biggest obstacles prevent it. What prevents us from saving lives are labels, shame and stigma, so we have to work together and change this, alleviating all of that, first of all, by challenging the labels and the words we use and committing to not using words like drug addict and addict to crack. more appropriate and more sensitive is to use the person's first language, a person with a substance use disorder, not even a drug addict, there is no positive connotation for the word abuser, secondly, call out the stigma everywhere let us see it about mental health and addiction and, most importantly, talk to each other. and sharing our stories no matter what your connection to this topic is no shame worthy and shame can only live in the dark they grow in secret bring it out into the light of day talk about it and I believe you will be I am surprised how often that someone turns to you and says thank God, you said something too, and if you're a person in recovery and you haven't yet, maybe it's time to rethink some of that anonymity, come out of the shadows and shout. to the world that we are victors we are victors recover out loud you have been waiting share share it could save lives this is my

story

tell me your

story

thank you