Amudim and Ohel Addiction Awareness Event - Dr Norman Blumenthal 7-15-2017

can even everybody social involves being and David I see it's already past a lot of people's best time so I'm going to try to be very brief the right way my community where I grew up is to begin his sermon before I speak I want to say something so I also want to say something before I speak a number of years ago I was working with a young girl who was school phobic although they are familiar with classic school phobia enough about today with the bullying issue but classic school phobia the rule of thumb is you have to get her into the school you have to get it back into school or cost and I was consisting that you go to school just abilities of the class have to go to school this was a very entitled wealthy family young girl and she was in a very hard time so we had a meeting with the parents and the principal of school and she was trying every way to get out of coming to school and I wouldn't let her get away plate no you have to screw up comfort of building and finally she had a total meltdown and she started crying and she started screaming at me and she started telling me how much she hates me and what a terrible psychologist I am and then she decides he's going to come with the knockout punch and she said I'm going to tell all my friends what a terrible psychologist you are and nobody's going to come see you and I said that's why my name is David calculus I named naturality is very important and we see them so in this week's parsha at the Penobscot are associated with dosing her go to great lengths but also develop in israel i fear a very special name and the work i do for all my official title and Ojo is after family chair and crop trauma crisis and bereavement and really as an ecology my benefactors Mellon Phyllis that there what I say both the privilege and something very scary the privilege the bear the name of a family that does so much for the community the other hand I do it with some trepidation because it really raises the bar and the expectation I'm going to talk tonight how I changed my focus I actually haven't prepared you know to our speech here how I prepared speech but I decided based on the experience was an exposure that I had this past weekend and I to reiterate echo what the Furman said the gratitude of community to dedication but a lot of the things that I heard over the community are weakened from the community I want to sort of address this and what I want to address is what can the regular guy boot about the problem of kids at risk and the problem of over those I mean let's take most of us are not melt after Jack Jessee learned we're not we're not the kind of people who through not speak walk we're not the kind of people who go on to take maybe a youth program but what can the regular persons are like most of us to get people who are working hard just to get by regular people who want to see this problem what are the small little things we can do the Muslims forum talk they'll talk about our biack even how we throw the water dripping and when to the stone and when I penetrated this town he realized that heroic and penetrating thought but they asked the question which drop broke the spell which one was it I'm the answer they often say the first one because even if it took 2386 it hasn't been the first one it wouldn't be 2386 drop so what drops what little things can each of us do us regular people for this problem so let me talk about a few the first of all again I'm so so about risk factors or maybe the research on risk factors for addiction are very complex it can never be reduced to one thing it's every thing that caused this problem of the promo mentioned the the immersive childhood experiences and the strange thing is with trauma or risk factors is let's say we take ten risk factors and each one we give them the value of two the math is different than regular mail but if you have two of them it's not super food equals four it's two plus two equals six but is everything if mental illness it's traumatic events it's family stress its financial stress and all the factors and by the way a significant portion is a retic theory you know one of the problems we always have we look at risk factors is that we identify your respect what they we say that let's say that the headbangers we've been exposed to abuse the risk factor for for addiction but then we'll identify whole cluster of young people who are terribly abused the number of youth drug why why is some do some self there's significant sanitary fact that we're not clear what but there is that we know the research shows about forty to sixty percent as it doesn't most like that illness is is hereditary but it is the house of issues and mental illness etc and it harks back to what we spoke about here in the community on Friday night we have to stop being scared about humanity we are like everybody else and just like the communities like somewhere between ten to twenty five percent of the community does very point in their lives suffer from a mental illness whether it's depression whether it's anxiety whether personality disorders whether it's the more severe ones this bipolar we are we are flipped by as well and we have to do everything that we can to be stigmatized mental illness and to make it easier for people to seek out help and that's something you can do we spoke rabbits Friday night you can do this by not making jokes about being crazy I can do this by by not being so terrified we're in the bucum because somebody wants in therapy for something we can eliminate as a community we can treat those people who have psychiatric ailments as you would anyone else with any other kind of sickness and that way make it more make it more readily easily easy for people to go for help and then prevent a later deterioration they talk about what the permit talks about that Park and about embracing the promote embracing by the community the research shows convincingly that people who have connections and relationships are less than risk prediction the classic research is the research on dinner being dinner together I'm going to cite that research right now is the 2011 study but they've been many compared to teens who had frequent family dinners five to seven times a week those are at infrequent family dinners two or fewer are almost four times more likely to have used tobacco well than twice as likely it gives alcohol and doing a half time something like the earth how to use marijuana and almost four times like bein out and says that they expected to try to out from the future spend time with your family spend time with your children ask in a regular by rest address something else that I'm seeing the community is terribly concerning to me it has become almost an addiction that you have to have guests over every Shabbos and it becomes them like embarrassed if you're just going home with your family and it's wonderful it's wonderful that we have this community but from time to time you should at least LeMay even most of the time has a Shabbos meal just with your family it's not to tell you what happens when you invite people over you know you're having it is syndicate to the kitchen they eat some salami they run out and play and you talk to your friends you're not spending time with your family but try to come home for dinner try to spend time I know it's very hard we all have four jobs and while trying to make ends meet you know I remember the computer says that I have the size all Hawaii I teach my you I supervise that the Allied general and Jewish or a practice when I tell people I said your job I forget what these tuition but it is a lot of it is a lot of pressure but we have to go out of our way even if means coming home and spending time to make up make up some spare time whoa you don't shopping going somewhere tell you could come along have that connection those connections are significant types of prevention there's another important type of prevention one of the things that came up over this weekend and I think we have to address this because how do you only use numbers that drop is the issue keeps getting into high school we're having a significant crisis in our community we're growing is we have this meteorite it broke then our schools are not growing fast enough and more and more kids today are not find high school to go to I know that in my neighborhood the local public high school now serves kosher food has a minyan in the morning now some of the kids have to go to that advertised do because of certain needs but many of them are just kids who just couldn't get into any school in winter in our community and activities better than most now I'm not talking about the kids who are served with nothing but the kids who maybe could be you know Mazz it could be must've the Robin I remember one of the principal when I work in the school many years ago you could say I'm not going to sacrifice a missile for every stroke but increasing percentage of the kids who are not getting in their high schools are just kids who are not exceptional and just average they're not the most brilliant children not the top of this year and more and more of our high schools are rejecting to norm of our high schools and I say we're only for the top kids relativism the poverty under a moral high school I'm hearing about are canceling I they're raising gimmick laughter we're only have hours clips and the busy telling detectives the parents technique into this school to that school busy maybe doing admission to other schools so what can we do when I could build muscles what can the average person do sigh of a suggestion this emphasis came up on the weekend you are the parent of the allas child you are the parents of that exceptional child it old school the drooling to have in their program and you have a choice of what high school to go to when you make take the school that has amazing gimmick where even though you're in the office because when the parent of the potentially basic gimmick quest Compton's blog if you be a blogging good child or the parent of your kid says the school I want to go to this school that has a baby with you look live because I want my child to know that even though ski or she is exceptional that's not the Jewish community that the 3 million people got the Torah Darcy 900 of them has a 150 IQ and you're making a very important statement and you're helping prevent his address and you're helping prevent addictions by doing that and by the way if you do serve on a board of a school and the announcement it can't cancel in the basic game of life express your impressions because we're all better off even the Alice kids are better off when school has more heterogeneity in the school has more collective group of children even those who and where community for everybody not just with the Mitsuyo that's how you and that's a form of prevention they mentioned something else that I think it's important I mention every single one of us can do it's two weeks into the summer I can't tell you how many phone calls I've already gotten from campus about issues of problems that are going on in camp now most of the kids are having a fabulous time very few people call up the director of trauma and bereavement ool to say that the kids having a wonderful hope and time learning to you if we're in a plane sports and what are you gonna do that but they're the ones where their problems or the for the parents or the ones that are calling it now this may sound simple but it's something I think very important can't rely enough we pay we choose and when the camp representative company halt to play or send you the video or interview with the camp director whether you intend to get to this camp I want you to ask them the following question that witching hour you know the witching hour is in camp between when lights out and the kids are supposed to go to sleep when the council has spent his entire day with these bratty kids climbing has a chance the whole time for him or herself to go and play ball and to read ass black hang out with their friends and you have one OD supervising the entire campus is that what's happening if one person watching on campus or is there an adult or is it some sort of counselor figure who is in the bunk because it's during those times that sometimes sometimes some pretty awful things happen and again I'm not saying that the only reason for kids at risk are the only reasons why we see these kind of suicides is because of of sexual youth of significant one but we are seeing because of the way we're educating our children was seeing a decrease an adult to child abuse but we're seeing a dramatic increasing in a peer to peer reviews and we're also seeing a dramatic increase pressure in our community of crippling abuse and if you can do something to reduce that and we've done something we've done something to reduce the adult adjust children are much more empowered children are much more educated and so the credit of a lot of organizations including those that are represented here so that hat that has happened but now we've got to focus their attention on the other type of abuse because that's also a way to prevent addiction and in camps we have we have to tell the camp directors in today's world we want towards the position that's not there should be an adult with the children all that well what they call adults I mean those are children's ideas so them but hopefully there should be some sort of adult watching over them we have to be more sensitive to people who are suffering I want to share with you I would say very obliquely I want of divulge what it sought to share with you a conversation I had that was traumatic for me happened to be that I had to go to a school is often the case following the price that I'm unspecified which in case someone narrows down what school it is but there was a crisis in a school but one that was very dear ailing to despair and to the kids and that's what died in the Oh little team does we go to the school we meet with the kids instead right and it happened to be the alma mater of a relative of mine my relative mine had gone to that school so I had to see him so via music and I was in your old school and I told them what had happened and why I didn't need my intervention and he said to me you know when I was there in high school there was a kid who took his life the committed suicide we don't use that term commit suicide where we for reasons were I'm not going to go into but yeah he took his life I haven't even said next we're not happening and the next morning we smoothed it out for two minutes and everything was fine I said to him marshy whatever his name is if I was looking for a high school for my kid and I heard about a school that had a tragedy of that magnitude that schmoozed it away for one or two minutes I wouldn't want my kid in that school do you have any idea that mother slept one one night since then where's our heart where they're dealing and we have and if we're connecting and we're connecting to other people we have to have more than Harbor yet suspect avoid this notion that strength is not being emotional we have looked around our communities and see what's going on and feel it and then if we feel it we expend ourselves and that's also a way another drop of water of what we can do is that we can connect us that we can help all those people potentially address if there's the recent divorcé senior community invite them over for a meal divorce is not a communicable disease but then no you still respect them you still think highly of them if there's a family in your community where a parent has been incarcerated and the children are struggling with this give them invite them along when you go on Calamari to it to the part to the amusement park those are the drops of water and I'm telling you from personal experience I know that's that little bit that makes a difference that could really prevent an addiction one or two more points and then I'll conclude this is the way it works with addiction is to get somebody into treatment sometimes to get somebody to achieve abstinent as I'm sure dr. pearl and all those who are working the field know you have to be really hard with them so you can't be you know you really have to overcome part and parcel of addictions of denial and you really have to sometimes hit them over the head and and twist their arm till it hurts for them to get the help that they need but if they go for the help and if they do it seriously they deserve our respect they deserve our commendation they deserve our forgiveness as you will and we have to embrace them you know there was back in the Reagan era Nancy Reagan was of one of her one of her scenes for one of her undertakings for substance abuse and she had a theme which was just saying no so many people in substance abuse field such as Nancy Reagan now a solution to the homeless problem just buy a house you know it's not that simple and I have to tell you the work that I do and I don't do the right intervention in an addiction but I certainly would work with recovered addicts when they reach those anniversaries I convention Mendes commendations I said it's bigger than anything of you that this is huge and it really is and right and you understand that so those who have addicted once they tasted that once they've been in a realm of pleasure once they've had that endorphin rush in their brain it's always there I had a cousin from from marriage and he again I'm saying you won't figure it out as my most of my family are dispersed throughout the globe but he was one of these pygmies who wandered around the world in bell-bottoms and psychedelic shirts doing drugs like crazy somehow found himself in Israel wanted in for the Kotel somebody got their hands today the from guy and he's learning and you know a serious from guy we came originally from France and I remember his telling me if he was the ready twenty years from my cousin saving me his family entire tested visited Israel America back south he said I'll step off that plane I'll go right back to drugs after 30 years as father became too old to travel is only pond they went to visit him in Kerala the 30 years it's not easy you know if I can just reference the posture the ships are abundant you know we can have got the Brittany breezy show up he got the bris of peace so how many of its is something very beautiful about it why did you ever get this gift of peace because he committed murder he got a taste I have never murdered anyone so I don't know but he's got that case of that omnipotence and what it was like to take a life and it could become part of him so Shem rewarded him by giving him solo by making him peaceful so he won't become addicted to it but that's that's the nature addiction and we we do need a God self that the recovered addicts have that help from God so they overcome them because we have to embrace them and concise very links there was like one quickly one study to study it's very interesting about Dixon but it really it also connects with Ausmus Jews this was funny time in 2006 by that the core who was an anthropologist and he studied Nepalese children between the ages of 5 and 14 who were kidnapped from their home and forced into the Army and experienced terrible atrocities and violent part of our history it replaced Nepal with his our this was part of what what we went through it and not so longer ourselves but he found something very interesting those who came back after 20 or 30 years in these kind of situations came back to the villages those who were just ignored nobody referenced nobody talked to them nor did anything special for them has very high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder those who whom the community embrace and those who come to the city has had celebrations welcome them back helps them re-- to grade them into the village at very low rates of post-traumatic stress disorder that's what we have to do for the recovered addict let me just conclude with one other important consideration which i think is again the draws that we can do you know the research in the general community is witho the hot topic and addictions opiate addictions and the venom was referenced earlier and the highest rate of overdose from opiates in the general community but I'm not sure it was clear as it's true in our community is in actuality in the baby-boomers among the 50 and 60 year olds and one of the theories is the reason they do that they live this time when we had Angeles where we had like was relatively easy they never experienced terrible terrible hardship so as they get older and they experience pain and infirmity they don't have the wherewithal to cope with it now we do live in very wonderful time and very the time one of the things I often think about is what it was like to me to go to school the ones like my kids to go to school I went to MTA over while you write the underwire campus I took the subway we had to take that treacherous walk from the subway stations at school in the neighbor was a very bad neighborhood at that time and I had to learn how to be alert and had a certain vent potential children many of mobs my friends digit margin that gets hurt I thought would like to tell them when I first thought it was in the field one of my first Jobs was to work with court-mandated teams where violent teens what the court were trying to see some therapy we could help I had a group of some of these very rough kids and I used to sail when I'd meet their parents they looked deeply familiar every leaf once an autumn on Avenue 180 for 3,000 you are there with forged cousins with basket chains I will evolve the villages bubble promise don't remember another like yesterday yeah it was a hard you know final to share life kids went to school right in their neighborhood within a mile of our house they could walk there they do bicycle they're in a safe secure neighborhood we have our lives are much easier but you know what and we have to live in a time and I'm not suggesting that we purposely send our children to the ghettos the school so they they somehow grow and benefit from it but sometimes we're a little too careful to protect that children from difficulties we want to insulate them so much we have so much of the wherewithal I can't tell you how many - I hear from kids I work with who talked about classmates who don't like attention in class never do their homework anything and yes how you going to cut out ok the tutor will do teach me they're going to school knowing they're going to tutor and they don't do any effort I mean I'm going to be with my kids I had a rule of thumb my kid came home with ten math problem and they had to do eight and they're struggling with - I would help them but they came home they new to them and they could they couldn't do eight I wouldn't help them for the means one of the things that each it didn't teach it right you're not paying attention either way they have to know that I'm not going to I'm not going to teach you real and we have to think in terms of our children that we don't over involve them we don't make life so simple because a big chunk of addiction is removing pain as I've mentioned it's and that needs to sort of anesthetize ourselves and sometimes children have to struggle and sometimes children have to learn a little bit from the schools not hard knocks we don't what I think those who can never understand this this thing with playdates I was told by a stool and I was a witch but Christ who their parents are calling the school and ask them school to please make sure the kids have playdates this Charlotte and Princeton well that's my job now I just tell my kids you know what is a playdate when I was a kid you went to the playground we played until the scientist beat you up anywhere no you know where you live at all now the end of your point days you need to watch in the design that what that was it and we're saving it to even control our children play in their social interaction we need to sometimes that let them learn how to struggle themselves with insulin tolerate appropriate for our time a certain amount of difficulties in hardship I'll conclude with just the thought that I had you know we read the partial of TF a triumph and before the three attempts of and said well no not amel condemned concerti car Abu QIR horrible kindergarten takes the direct way because God said I don't want the nation going back so there's two key to because but if the maloca between the rampart and even Ezra what this means because we know key is the word that has many meanings but Ron Ron says key the first T means a faulty even though God is intended for the right way even though it's closer because he didn't want us going back but even as a disagrees system and it says both of them means because because of his clothes and because we didn't want going back and I think is a very profound lesson dude but I think even as is telling us sometimes just the fact that it's difficult sometimes just the fact that it's challenging is enough of a reason that there are two reasons sometimes we ask whether kids have something more challenging so they can taste adversity as long as the counselor ever said there's nothing more straight than a crooked ladder and those are again some of those drops and I mean sure them anymore and we can hopefully talking custom over those of little drops which we can make a difference for the diction thank you