Amudim Awareness Event May 1, 2017, Zvi Gluck and Josh Mehlman Part 1 of 5

good evening everyone thank you all for coming to tonight's very important evening of awareness seeing all of you here is an inspiration not just for me personally but for the many people and organizations that dedicate themselves to this hard work this is the first step to bringing much needed change that we all desperately are demanding before we begin the program I just want to say a few thank-yous to the people that made this happen first and foremost to my new best friend Teske Stern who doesn't know the meaning of can't won't or no and also has no concept of time good evening everyone my name is V Glock I'm the founder and director of amudhan and I thank you all for coming here tonight then we I would like to thank the event sponsors who without them this would not we would not be here tonight first off is another dear friend of my family for many years Jack Jaffa who also doesn't know the meaning of no and reliable health care systems and illegal bomb thank you all [Applause] and it's also important to mention our co-sponsoring organizations all of which are at the forefront of dealing with issues pertaining to addiction abuse and mental illness oh hell and David Mindell who's here from oh hell thank you the safe foundation headed by Ike Dweck unfortunately we have to assure official a matter of Benjamin baba who wasn't able to make it but sent his a right and left hand to be here Davi thank you from relief resources our place the United task force and the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition we have Josh Melman with us tonight as well it's an it's truly an honor and a privilege to be amongst the leaders in our community and having all of us come together for such an important sensitive matter the hope for tonight is to bring awareness to the community specifically regards to addictions and how it impacts our community our friends our families our neighbors and people that we see in children the time has come that we together have to break the stigma associated with this with people willing to get help so that people can get the help that they need well too often we hear from people that they would love to get help but it's going to hurt the family's name reputation business affection for their children and so much more this must come to an end we have to all agree to stand up together and encourage those in pain to find solutions and help too many times we've had people literally choose life death over life because they were too scared to get help one of the stories I mentioned previously and I'll say it again we had a woman middle-aged woman with kids who contacted us for help with a very severe opiate addiction which resulted after a very bad car accident and when we finally did the intervention and met with her her husband parents in-laws and the family rug and we tried convincing her to go to rehab and explaining to her why it's important her answer was I can't go to rehab if anybody knows my kids will never get oakum the therapist that was in the room looked at her and said you do realize that if you don't go to rehab your children may not have a mother and her response to that was if I die people will feel bad for my children because they're you Simon and they'll get shidduchim but if people find out that I'm an addict they will never marry my children this is what we need to stop there's also a very big misconception that addiction is a matter that affects teens and people that want to party and unfortunately nothing can be further from the truth addiction affects people of all ages genders and backgrounds we have clients that amou them as young as 13 and people in their 60s and everything in between recently I heard from a very dear friend of mine who's in this industry as well who mostly deals with teens that some of the parents of the teens that he's dealt with have said at times they wish their children would have cancer instead of having a drug addiction because if their children had cancer people in the community would feel bad for them and want to help them and give them support but being that that the children are addicts they're not willing to get that same compassion this is what we have to change we need to accept that people who suffer from addiction are ill they're not bad they're not evil they need our help they need our support we also need to show support to the family members and loved ones of those who are suffering from addiction we have to give them the physics of they can cope and be able to help their loved ones overcome the obstacles in ways that are extremely important in life savings tonight we're going to hear from her 'value Brittany shillitoe is going to give us different physic in dealing with these issues someone who's been at the forefront of these issues for a very long time and on a personal note on behalf of the thousands that we've serviced I'd like to thank the receiver for all of the help and guidance we're going to hear from dr. Akiva Perlman who's going to discuss the treatment options both for the person suffering as well as for the family it's important to note as I said before it's just as important to help the family and those affected as it is the Attic themselves we're going to hear from dr. Norman Blumenthal who's going to discuss some of the early warning signs identifying risk factors associated with addiction and then we're going to hear for a few brief minutes from the fellow Ikey who's going to speak about his personal experience battling addiction and what he's been able to do to overcome it after the presentations we are going to have a Q&A session with the panelists and at the far end to my left and your right we're going to have a nalaxone training nalaxone is a drug that reverses the effects of an opiate overdose the medication will be given out for free after you get trained again I'd like to thank everybody for showing his support for such a sensitive issue and for coming out here tonight and I would like to ask Josh Millman through the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition to come up for a moment first of all thank you to three Glock for spearheading this effort and so many more efforts around the country to help teens adults and everybody who needs help 24 hours a day not just with a mood in but for many years on every possible issue in the community it's a score tonight to introduce my Rebbe the receiver of Elliot British leader Rosh Hashanah called dovish at the kedusha who provides guidance and inspiration from both sites are IRA and organizations and I would say nationwide but internationally at this point Baruch Hashem it's a big course to have his guidance farm udom on a regular basis as our community in Flatbush you