The Safe Foundation - Drug Crisis Event 4/25/23

you know oh we're going to start in 60 Seconds Rabbi beta come here whoever's sitting in the section beyond the cameras if you want to just move up closer if you're comfortable doing so we'd love for you to do that okay let's get started I'm here for the safe foundation and hot sauce I want to extend a heartfelt Welcome to our esteemed rabbis Rocher shivot our speakers and our guests here tonight I want to welcome Rabbi Joey bada Rabbi Joey Haber Rabbi David Sutton thank you so very much for being here and for the other rabbis lending their support to this cause Rabbi Soul Cass and Rabbi David ozeri Rabbi Eli mansor Rabbi mayor udid I especially want to thank them for continually demonstrating true Community leadership and lending their support to addressing this important and difficult issue reinforcing just how critical the marriage is of seeking out both Medical Professional and spiritual guidance when in distress I want to also welcome Dr Jason Zimmerman director of hot Salah and Dr Akiva Perlman PhD licensed clinical social worker professor at wurtzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University and he teaches trauma and addiction someone in our community died in a car accident because they weren't wearing a seat belt everyone in this room would send a message to their families and loved ones warning make sure you put on your seatbelt next time you get in the car even though most people instinctively they get a new car the first thing they do is they put on their seatbelt but if shalom someone experiences a fentanyl overdose you may hear a few Whispers but most parents and loved ones don't make family meetings to issue a similar warning one need only open a newspaper or watch a newscast to know there is a fentanyl crisis going on in America in 2021 there are 107 000 deaths from drug overdoses and over two-thirds of those were from fentanyl overdoses that means over 72 000 deaths from Fentanyl 42 000 that's that's how many there were from car accidents in 2021. sadly as hats Allah will attest this is just not America's crisis it is our community's crisis traditionally when we think of people dying from drug overdoses we think of heavy drug users addicts people who just push things too far beyond their body that their body could handle that's not the threat we're facing fentanyl deaths can be the unintended result of casual even one-time ingestion of the fentanyl lace pill or vape cartridge at some point in their lives someone in your family is going to encounter someone else offering them a pill or other illicit substance whether it's at a social get-together or a party or a late night study group trying to stay awake or focused for a big exam doesn't have to be at a rave the problem is going to present itself and it doesn't discriminate by how much money you have how popular you are how religious you are whether you're shy or outgoing or whether you're male or female the first portion of tonight's program is about prevention and awareness towards that end we're going to begin by screening a video which is admittedly difficult but absolutely necessary to watch we will then hear from safe and our rabbis the second half of the program we will introduce Dr Perlman who will speak about strategies on how to approach our loved ones about the problem and ultimately how to best be sure that when it's our loved ones face with a choice they know to say no please direct your attention to the screens unresponsive at this time ETA about two minutes any further my name is Dominic tierno since I graduated high school in 2014 I've had the great honor of directing a number of documentary films about drugs and drug addiction our mission is to revolutionize drug education by telling real life stories that motivate young people to make one of the most important decisions of their life and that's the decision to not use drugs 2020 was the worst year for drug overdose deaths that we have ever seen in the beginning of summer in 2020 I came across this article a 14 year old kid from a town I grew up in had died from what appeared to be a drug overdose he's a smart funny guy who like many kids was struggling with some anxiety issues and decided that he would turn to drugs to see if he could help himself with that what happened was he went and bought this pill this Oxycontin pill from a guy he had known because he thought that pill might ease the pain of what he was going through mentally well he didn't know it but that Oxycontin pill wasn't a real Oxycontin pill it was a fake pill it looked just like the pill that he wanted to try but instead of Oxycontin it was made with fentanyl a synthetic opioid known to be 50 to 100 times the strength of morphine that one pill he took that night killed him almost instantly and his mom found him dead in his bedroom the next morning before I can even finish that article I'm scrolling through and I see another linked article not far away around the same time another 14 year old dead from fentanyl so then I go back to Google and I type in fentanyl deaths I hit search and then it all made sense I saw another kid and I saw high school students college students young adults all recent all over the country all dead from Fentanyl and so I'm looking at that and I'm saying these aren't just normal overdose deaths these people think they're taking one drug and turns out they're being killed why have we not heard about this it's a drug 50 times more potent than heroin and doctors say just touching it can send you to the emergency room we're talking about the synthetic opioid fentanyl the first time I heard about fentanyl was my sister busting in my house being like don't touch anything in this room it's Fentanyl and I'm like I don't even know what you're talking about like I have no idea what's going on right now so most people haven't heard of this because we haven't been talking about it back in 2013 when it first started showing up only about three percent of drug users were dying from it now we're looking at over 50 percent of drug deaths being attributed to Fentanyl if Alexander could have got a lesson I wish he knew about fentanyl I wish he understood that fentanyl poisoning is real and that every time you try something you're playing with your life it is it is pill roulette every time you try it as a mom of a kid that was just trying to experiment that's where it kids [Music] as a mom of a kid that died just wanting to experiment I wish I could just shake you and tell you and make it real for you but I don't know how to do that I won't be there when you're faced with these decisions I know but if he knew the effects of his passing it would crush him Alex had no intentions of me knowing what it felt like because his face for the last time the images that I'm left with of that day Replay in my mind on a regular basis foreign [Music] about fentanyl now don't wait until your best friend has died or a brother or your sister learn about it now so you could help your friends you can tell them you can warn them you can be a very important part of Saving Lives how much cocaine somebody would have to ingest to kill them this is the approximate number of prescription pills one would have to ingest to kill them [Applause] this is the amount of heroin the average person would have to ingest to kill them Fentanyl you're gonna have to bring that camera up here real close to to see it this much fentanyl would kill you and I if we split it [Music] they put fentanyl in cocaine they put Fentanyl and heroin they put fentanyl as we already know and talked about into counterfeit pills it's odorless it's tasteless you don't know it's there and when you find out it's there it's too late you won't even know it you'll be dead 2500 people would be killed by that amount of Fentanyl does that sound like a drug to you does that sound more like a poison I was a police officer for 31 years and during my time in Narcotics I'd never heard of fentanyl in homicide I saw many many tragic things I saw people that were killed by shooting stabbings beatings nothing that I saw at that particular time would have ever prepared me to see Jessica I was at work I got a telephone call from my my wife Cherie she was frantic uncontrollable screaming into the phone about Jessica [Music] and I knew something had happened Jessica lived with her boyfriend Nicholas and a stupid decision in which they ordered and had some cocaine delivered to them to their house resulted in them ingesting it and my daughter at that particular time he came for over 29 years of age Jessica didn't want to die she has a beautiful daughter Alara who is now with Sheree and I and we are raising and uh she had everything to live for Jessica knew about fentanyl you know from talking about this issue after she died with her friends I discovered that Jessica had a friend that he had even died a couple of weeks prior to her death and Jessica had spoken to her friends about being afraid well if you knew about it why would you even risk it so you don't you knew it why did you make that bad decision who knows those are those are things that you'll never answer we're just trying to prevent it from happening to somebody else you know four years ago DEA in Arizona seized zero fentanyl this last year we seized enough fentanyl to kill 70 million people you're playing Russian roulette out there when you're taking these pills and you're buying the stuff off the street well you have to be careful about is what you're asking for and what you get can be two different things and if you're buying the stuff from somebody online their bottom line is they're just looking to make a quick Buck they don't have your best interest in mind it'll tell you whatever you want to hear unless you're getting these drugs from your doctor or a licensed Pharmacy in a bottle that has your name on it you may as well assume these drugs are fake you're not getting the real thing fentanyl is literally taken over the drug Market it's in everything it's in meth it's in cocaine obviously the counterfeit pills that are out there we're starting to see it showing up now in marijuana the people who make this stuff who are putting the Fentanyl and everything they have one goal to get you hooked fentanyl is highly highly addictive they're going to trick you into thinking you're getting something you're not to take you down that rabbit hole to get you hooked on Fentanyl and have you become an addict because to them you're a customer and you'll be a returning customer at that point one of those times you're going to get enough fentanyl to kill you Alex was in her bedroom at night getting ready for bed she went on social media in search of Oxycodone it wasn't hard for her to find a drug dealer and she had what she thought was oxycodone delivered to our house one pill had enough fentanyl to kill five people my daughter took half of this pill and died instantly [Music] in an instant my life was changed forever [Music] my last memory of my daughter is of her being willed out on a gurney I saw my daughter brought into this world and I saw her leave this world [Music] I have four daughters a beautiful wife every time we take a family picture I don't see who's there I see who's missing it's an odd feeling to looking forward to dying because you know that's when your heart will be made whole again Alex would have never wanted this don't do it to your parents it was March 31st and that evening was one of the most special evenings we had had in a long time I told them to come downstairs yeah I wanted to hug him I don't know why and came down the stairs and he hugged me and he said Dad I'm so sorry for all the things that I had put you through in the past and I said don't worry about it Daniel you're just a kid and you're just learning but you're going places you got a great future coming ahead of you I'm just so proud of you you have no idea all right Dad good night love you good night son I love you too see you tomorrow morning next day about eight o'clock in the morning when I walked into his room he was in a lying position facing up up against the headboard with his hands over his chest and I saw his eyes he had a little blue on top of his lips I screamed at the very top of my lungs Daniel I called the paramedics They Carried him down the stairs and put them on the first floor and started doing chest compressions and then they took him to Los Angeles children's hospital where we were put in a waiting room later on that evening a team of doctors came in [Music] and he said if your boy is just a shell of a boy that he was before he's not coming back my only child [Music] I couldn't protect them laughs I couldn't save his life I couldn't save my son Daniel my son is gone it wasn't supposed to be this way he was supposed to graduate from high school this year if you love yourself if you respect yourself if you love life you have a choice because it is between life or death this is no joke you can and will die how do I know this I can tell you that I've met thousands upon thousands upon thousands of parents Nationwide [Music] I wish somebody has sat me down and had this talk with me about what fentanyl does to people I didn't get that chance you do you know there's always been one main problem with the films that we make and it's the reason why we try to keep them as real and as relatable as possible people just so commonly think that it will not happen to them I'm talking about great people nice people cool people intelligent people with big plans for the future big potential gone because of one choice they didn't know would end their life fentanyl is coming for anyone and everyone so the most important message that I can give to kids to teens young adults anybody is the same old message we've heard time and time again and that's to really get serious about not even trying a drug you see back when we first started I was telling kids not to use drugs because you might get hooked you might get addicted now it's not there's not even time for that now it's don't try drug because you might actually not wake up tomorrow you might actually not get another chance one choice is all it takes if you don't believe that I guarantee you at this point there was someone very similar to you who wish they could be here right now to look into the camera and look into your eyes and say don't do it please don't do it please I wish I wouldn't have done it don't do it don't risk your life so my question for you is are you going to listen or will it be your family and your friends holding your picture wishing they could have been there tell you [Music] this is my son Alexander he died at 14 years old from fentanyl poisoning this is our daughter Jessica she was 29 years old when she was killed by Fentanyl this is my daughter Alex [Music] she was murdered at 20 years old by a drug dealer Who Sold her a counterfeit pill made of Fentanyl this is my son Daniel Joseph Bertha Johnson killed at the age of 16 by illicit Fentanyl thank you impressed I know that was a very difficult video for everyone to watch I've seen it three or four times and it never gets easier while we just watched the heart-wrenching story of four strangers struggling with losing the loved ones to Accidental fentanyl overdoses I can tell you firsthand that drug of overdoses and deaths are no strong no stranger to our community drug use is not someone else's issue it's our issue and unless we take a proactive measure we will be dealing with another tragedy what makes this video especially difficult for me to watch is that sadly I've dealt with families that you and I and everyone in this room knows well that have gone through similar circumstances and experiences as the people in this video good kids good families with good parents and good backgrounds we want to do everything in our power to make sure no one else needs to go through this again good evening thank you that video is difficult um and I'm going to change my speech it's a little bit out of order you saw testimony from four families that had favorable overdoses I will tell you that solo administered Narcan four times in the last 10 days in New York City think about that four people who have four families that don't have to be on a video no back to the speech thank you to the rabbis robot him for supporting this extremely important endeavor to the individuals responsible for putting this event together and for working on getting this extremely important message out so for background I'm Dr shimshi Zimmerman Jason Zimmerman I am a trained emergency medicine physician I work at maimonides Medical Center I am the medical director of Salah of New York City I'm not an expert in drug abuse or addiction medicine but there's very few people around who see as many patients or families or deal with enough cases in the emerging time that I do thank you to everyone here all of you sitting out there all of you watching on video for taking the time to come out taking the initial steps to acknowledge that we have a problem to come together to work on preventing and raising awareness to prevent any future issues my goal here is not as bad as that video it's not to instill fear my job here is to give testimony that this message and this problem is real it's here in our community it's here today and it is killing people and breaking apart families and communities as an attending physician in the ER and is not telemedical director as a community member as someone personally involved with unfortunately numerous cases to refer organizations such as safe which I've only recently come to see just how fantastic of a resource this organization is with a brother another Dr Zimmerman who's a psychologist in the community and so many members of the community who are out there saving lives every day we're here to try to help prevent the problem that we know is unfortunately inevitable we're all here tonight and we are literally saving lives the first step in addressing any issue we know is recognizing and admitting that there is a problem I'm not going to tell you that everyone here has a risk of coming across someone who's using drugs who's abusing alcohol or has an addiction but it's likely so we have to recognize and acknowledge that our families our children are at a risk and a higher risk than ever before of being exposed to this trust me when I tell you that I would rather be here every night of the week giving this speech over and over having to have another conversation on oddseller coal or in the ER and explaining to a family why we were unsuccessful in resuscitating their loved one from a fatal overdose it happens it happens too often even one case is too much we need it to never happen unfortunately people have this misconception that you have to have had a traumatic childhood you have to have been an abused child to turn to drugs or alcohol let me tell you and I'm sure you'll hear it over and over just the pressures of going to school potentially being bullied the pressures of fitting into society pressures of community even having a friend that just wants to experiment to try something for fun can lead to a path of destruction and a quick spiraling out of control maybe it's just an extra drink maybe it's a party for after finals at school it may even be from a prescribed medication that a doctor prescribed from an illness or an injury it could have a tremendous potential to escalate to wanting more to needing more to wanting to experiment we hear them all the time my friend takes it as no problem and his life is great my friends are at a party I'm not going to fit in if I don't try they try it once and if they survive they want to try it again we must break this pattern we must intervene early on and that's the goal of tonight it's not just our children it's our wives our husbands our parents our siblings our friends our neighbors our community members and our school members no one is immune to this disease you would be very surprised that often the pro the patient or the person with a serious drug or alcohol addiction is the one sitting next to you in a restaurant or in school smiling laughing appearing to live a great life going on vacation do you know what he's taking to get that smile on his face how he needs to pop a pill just to get out of the house to inject their snort meds to get through the day unfortunately it's never as it seems how real is this problem I told you that that video gave testimony of four heart-wrenching stories I think the people up on this stage have thousands times that the incidence of opioid overdoses has increased dramatically between 1990 and 2017 and is now the leading cause of injury related death in the United States since 2009. as you saw in the video and as I'm sure other people will talk about tonight just the last three to four years has seen hundreds and hundreds percentage increases in the amount of drugs and overdose coals that have been around and we in this community in our community are not immune from it again I'm here to give testimony that the problem is much bigger than anyone in this room can even imagine I'm not going to tell you that people are dying every day in our community from it but it's definitely a daily problem daily calls and all too often these calls are critical due to drug overdoses our EMTs and our paramedics giving intranasal or IV naloxone Narcan to reverse opioid overdoses from Percocets oxycodones oxycontins morphines and of course Fentanyl transporting patients unresponsive from alcohol poisoning Xanax overdoses to dealing every day with just side effects and bad reactions to ingestions of stimulants even marijuana or effects of CBD and gummies some of which are now legal and actively sold dozens of calls last year for accidental ingestions from children babies by getting their hands on something that's just left around the house I promise you we would rather have zero hatsilla calls and be very bored and not drive lights and Sirens than to have to deal with any one of these calls just yesterday and this is not just for tonight this is a real story I worked in the ER yesterday for 12 hours and I took over caring for a young female that had already been in the ER for 18 hours and she was still not medically stable or safe because the drugs that she had taken instead of an oxycodone were actually a mix of Fentanyl and something called xylazine which is an animal tranquilizer she had received six doses of Narcan so she can continue breathing however Narcan does not reverse xylazine and she remained sedated for over 24 hours up until today where she was finally determined to be safe xylazine is now known on the streets as trink short for tranquilizer or Shrink dope just this Friday New York City Department of Health put out an advisory showing that 49 percent of lab evaluated pills were actually fentanyl when labeled as something else and that's just here in New York City I hope that being here tonight or watching the live stream and listening to the lineup of speakers and hearing the presentations just gives you a little insight to how to recognize and prevent a potential problem as well as giving you information on resources that you can reach out to or pass along to anybody that you feel may be benefit or receive assistance from and of course a message that everyone should know to call out Salah immediately for any concerns or for any potential overdose thank you I'm going to invite Rabbi to come say a couple of words thank you Jimmy it's very hard to speak after that but I guess the first thing to say is to thank God Salah for all that they do nobody wants to be in the hands of hatsala but we know that we feel safer with you around so thank you and all the people that are there day and night seven days a week and of course special thanks to Ike Spike to Jimmy safe is another type of had Salah but I think there's one big difference between hatsala and safe and that is when people are in ahatsala call they deal with somebody who wants to be treated but safe I think struggles with getting people to want to be treated that's how sick people are that they don't even know they need to be treated the people on the stage could say a lot more than I can I guess my job here is tonight is just to recognize their great work and to appreciate what they do and hope that nobody ever has to use them and I think that's why we're here because they really want to go out of business you know this battle this challenge is actually not a new one it was the first challenge of creation very clearly spelled out when the first Man was created Hashem told him don't eat from that fruit because when you eat from that fruit you will die and most people don't know this but the first man was not created in gun Eden he was not in the garden of pleasure the Torah reports he was standing outside the garden of pleasure but to get into the garden of pleasure he needed to do one thing he needed boundaries not to eat from that fruit we speak about people dying but there are so many people dying that are not dead there are so many people that are suffering that are still alive people vaping the people drinking the drugs all different types of things going on you don't have to die Adam didn't die when he ate from the fruit but he brought death into the world and he brought pain into the world they're all different types of death that a person can experience and that's our challenge today our challenge today is to decide how we make sure that we are going to live that our children are going to live they're going to live the highest possible life of pleasure but that could only happen when we have boundaries without boundaries there's no gun ending without boundaries there's no Garden of pleasure in life and the world we live in doesn't like boundaries it's a world where everything goes every speech goes every person counts doesn't matter who you are the old is gone the new is great There Are No Boundaries to what you could say or do and that's the world that we have inherited and the world that we're expected to succeed in and that's why we're here tonight and I think more than anything what these people want from us is to make sure that we make a better environment for ourselves and our children to make sure they understand that we live with boundaries we may have different kinds of boundaries but we also have boundaries there are things that we will not do my father won't do that my mother will never say that you know I heard once a great man that said that in life you're not measured by what you do but you're measured by the things you would never do they are things that I would never do if I did it even once that defines me imagine as an example I would get up here and start cursing you probably will walk out but then I would say guys you know I haven't cursed in 30 years it was just once I don't usually curse just came out of my mouth I bet you'd be very disappointed because I'm not supposed to talk like that a person is not defined by what they do they Define by by what they would never do I would never cross that line that defines me I never do that and I think if that's the case we all have to make sure that in this world where there are no boundaries that we all have our boundaries and when people see us especially our children especially our students they too will understand there is no gun Eden without boundaries so again thank you thank you for having us tonight I know Joe told me they are thousands of people listening here I know we're going to be helping a lot of people that will never come to your office that will never come onto an ambulance those are the people that we're trying to help tonight thank you very much unlike the seat filler at the Oscars it was around each celebrity goes up Rabbi Hayward do you just call it celebrities they shoot the rabbis that I hear I'll tell you the truth usually when we speak I get excited to talk and get excited to speak and share an idea and a thought tonight after that video I'm like depleted but I still would like to share one little idea one thought and before we say that just like rabbi did um Spike we're close for a very very long time and we watch you start safe and what you've done with safe and Jimmy your support was safe and your being the backbone of what's safe is this organization is a gift to every single one of us and on behalf of rabbis is a gift to rabbis too because we don't know how to deal with addictions not drugs not alcohol not any other type gambling or any addiction like that and we need you as our goalies so to speak to be able to handle what we can't and to have an address and a phone number that we can call and say there's this kid is this boy does this family handle it really makes our job so much easier it's no secret that my family is needed a lot in the last three months and the work you've done and the diligence that Salah has and the dignity and the class that you bring to literally every single call is as the rabbi said before it's never fun when you have to call Hot Salah but it's actually beautiful when they arrive and here's my little thought it was compared before to car accidents and just like car accidents there's a lot of car accidents that can never be avoided there are many times that something happens that's completely not in the driver's control it's the other driver's controls the conditions something else happened that the driver had literally no control over but in many cases maybe even most cases of car accidents there is something we could do and something what we could have done and that's why when our kids get a license we talk to them about using their seat belts and not speeding and driving carefully and following instructions and understanding the signs and what they mean because they can't guarantee their safety but it raises the odds dramatically so I want to give you an idea that I think raises the odds dramatically of you helping your son and daughter from this challenge and that is that parenting has changed in the 50s and 60s parenting for members of our community members of the religious Jewish World across the country in the 50s and 60s parenting was just survival keep your job stay in a home have a house and don't be evicted in the 70s and 80s as we got our legs beneath us many of the parents were children of either Holocaust Survivors or War veterans and what became the mode and the focus of being a great parent was discipline and many people in this room remember their parents were disciplinarians and that's what it was about and this is my word and that's what I said and the reason you do it is because I said so and then we started to watch as kids slowly started to fade you'd have a boy in this family a girl and not family that family that was perfect the other family that was completely religious you'd watch kids all of a sudden lose the path and in the 90s and 2000s parenting became about love and all of a sudden even the teachers in schools and the way parents were all hugging their kids and caring about them and I love you and I'm there for you and I'm caring so parenting went from survival to discipline to love and all three of those concepts are incredibly relevant today everyone still is in survival mode children still need incredible amount of discipline and they definitely need your care and your love but in the last 10 years parenting has changed and there's a new quality that every parent needs to bring for every child whether they're two years old or 40 or 50 years old what your children need now is to be understood they need to feel like you get it because the challenges of 40 years ago was physical burdens our kids today don't have that many physical burdens all of what they're carrying is up here and they need a mother and a father not just a mother and a father that gets it and understands them and spends the time and puts in the energy to get what's on their mind what are you struggling with what do you like why do you like it why is that a struggle so many parents especially busy ones come home and see their daughter care about something or their son if there's a bunch of nonsense and you'll come up to your cage you're like who cares about the Rangers it's useless the point and you make comments like that and you make lines like that and it to a daughter will be jealous of his classmate and you're like who are you jealous of other kids who cares about that we're blessed it's nonsense to worry and you don't realize what you're doing to your child as your kid ever told you you lived in the olden days what they're saying to you is you don't get me and because of that I have no plans of ever getting you you don't understand me so why should I spend time in understanding you you don't know what I'm dealing with you don't know my struggle you don't know my joy you don't know what I appreciate you don't know what my friends are thinking about you don't understand what it feels like to be a child in 2023 if you don't get me why should I listen and I'm going to give you one little example from the Torah and conclude and leave it to the professionals wanted to bless his son esav and he blessed him and he said I'm going to bless you if you go and get me meat could you imagine that yes one of the most perfect people to ever live do you think that he cares about meat imagine if you went to Israel yourself he said I need a blessing he says I need a steak first because meat was in his mouth what does that mean the answer is this is appreciated meat because he knew that's what his son appreciated and if that's what you like and that's what you care about then I'm gonna show you I appreciate that too last night I spoke in Lakewood New Jersey to 600 parents that are very yeshivish and very very religious and one father came running after me after the speech he said Rabbi my son is 16 years old and I don't know what to do he's on his iPhone he never stops he loves music I said you know what you need to do you need to learn music and appreciate his music and ask him questions your kid is a sports fan ask him why they what what happened tonight how'd the Knicks play what round are they in how is it going your kid's listening to a song take an airpod it doesn't have to become one of them and be exactly like them and get on the floor with them but you need to get it I need to know what they're struggling if they feel like you understand them then they will want to understand you so the goal of tonight is to be a parent that gets it knows the struggles knows the challenges knows the what knows the why understands what motivates them and what makes them tick because parents that don't in so many years of being involved with your children I can't tell you how many times when you look around and you say does this parent even understand you literally left a empty house on Thanksgiving weekend and you have no you can't imagine what your son is going to do there you think they took the empty house to learn gamara like what are you thinking what are you thinking when you're son is hanging out with those friends and your daughter's doing going to those places you need to know what's happening in those places you need to know what's motivating them what's inspiring them what gets to them what draws them and what creates the struggle nothing guarantees safety the only thing that guarantees safety is God but we can change the odds and we could give our children a better chance and children that come from a home where both the mother and the busy father spend time and energy to get them appearance and children that have a much better chance of getting their parents and following exactly what you want and having the confidence and the courage when they're put in that position to say no thank you okay we're going to move into question and answer for Dr Perlman oh I'm sorry I'm wrong actually I'm going to introduce Dr Akiva Perlman to address then we're going to go into question answer wow I thought I came to share some ideas but clearly my soul was craving hearing some more meaningful ideas and that's where God placed me an opportunity to learn to observe for some great people wow the one thing I know when I saw that video I made sure I watched a few minutes of it I got the general gist of what it would be and I said I want to watch it with everybody so I didn't see the whole thing by myself but I know like most of you for those who are here without your children all I wanted to do was run home tell my kids how much I love them give them a hug them give them a kiss tuck them in properly and just tell them that the world is safe and the world is good which it is to a large degree and so deeply appreciate what the rabbi just said that there's no way to ensure safety there isn't just the other day the early morning and literally the car right in front of me was literally four o'clock in the morning a car in front of me is driving down the road and some drunk driver is coming in the other direction and thank God this man survived unfortunately the drunk driver did not and that's just a guy driving on his way driving on his way to work his way to shul whatever it was and those are things that we cannot control but we do have a lot more control and I think it's really important for us to walk out of A Moment Like This Feeling empowered as parents not disempowered feeling like we have the ability to make a difference which we absolutely do when you start breaking down the statistics between children who've had the opportunity to be raised by parents who are willing to have some really tough conversations which what tonight is ultimately about especially for the parents who brought their children like I hope it's really my wish that the drive home is going to be somewhat uncomfortable because hopefully we'll introduce you to some questions that we should start discussing with one another and this moving forward having these conversations I assure you are not comfortable at all but they're necessary they're necessary to have because we know this statistically that if we do have these conversations and if a child does have does have live with the belief that I could turn to a parent and ask them some challenging questions questions that the child themselves know my parents do not want to answer they don't want to hear these questions from me if children have that belief that I can ask the question they're much more likely to remain in a safe State and their children do not then they're like literally it's a blade of grass in the wind we're not quite sure what their fate is going to be almost always when you speak to people who've battled their way through some really challenging years in their lives you ask them repeatedly was there someone there discussing your inner world with you like the rabbi just said your struggles with you almost always the answer is going to be not at all they weren't there I was alone and that tells us something about that story simply empowering ourselves to have some really difficult conversations which is ultimately what we're going to turn to becomes the focus fear causes us to freeze when you watch a video like that it like really to some degree it inspires us to say we need to do something and Fentanyl is a different Beast it's a different conversation altogether it's not something that we had in years past where by and large there was a trajectory to death in drug use you started somewhere you often started with alcohol then you made your way to pot possibly cocaine some psychedelics you'd move your way into the painkiller world and find your way to heroin often that could take five to ten years and it's a slow progression into that place with many many warning signs when dealing with fentanyl fentanyl is something that someone could be using on entry-level use when it comes to drugs and all of a sudden they get a bad batch and there's nothing we could do about it literally all you could hope and pray for is that someone catches them and provides the right level of care for that individual and that's a terrifying thought it's a debilitating thought trust his parents and yes we need to pray we need to pray for their well-being but we need to go well beyond that which is how do we Empower them to start having some very challenging dialogue with us and with them so I hope tonight we get a little bit more comfortable with the discomfort we'll talk about some of the dialogue that we could have and I want to talk about two objectives before we get to some of the questions number one when we speak about overdose and we speak about death we just want to talk a little bit about those people I spend most of my day listening to the struggles that these individuals have and I'll be remiss of me to not share some of that with you so we at least understand who they are and what they're going through especially from a an addictive perspective but then most first and foremost we want to talk about what these conversations could and should ultimately look like fentanyl is a real threat and it's it's a different threat than what we're accustomed to but I want to start with a a funeral that I was at at a dear friend of mine a few years ago I got that call that fateful morning and it was someone that struggled for many years he was someone that I went to high school with he would sit right to my right in most classes some of them right behind me we'd share notes and make funny comics to one another it's got some great stories we could talk about but then there he was I got that call and it was a graveside funeral which like was said before many of the events many of the losses within our community are often not discussed as losses the way they actually present themselves we call them other things because there's so much shame and it's far from me to look at any parent and say you should be more honest and more open about what happened to you the shame that someone carries is profound and for them to retain their dignity I understand but just know what's happening on any given day on average around 200 people in this country are dying is a direct result of fentanyl forget about any other drug so certainly within our community itself when I reach out I serve on the board at a mudim I reach out to speak luck within the last year within our community that we're largely familiar with we had over a hundred deaths that and again most of us will say well I didn't hear a hundred times that's not something I'm familiar with but then scan your mind and say what did you hear was it an aneurysm what it was something else something sudden that didn't quite make sense in order to preserve some degree of dignity and of course there's some people who are familiar with what happened with what the real story ultimately is but I'm standing there at this funeral a graveside funeral because there was so much shame it was just friends close friends and family and everyone was talking about how beautiful this young man was and he was he had a very sensitive tender Soul like many addicts do one of the things you'll read Shea style writes about it in in one of his books the god of our understanding where he said that addicts in general are more sensitive than most and it's as a result of that sensitivity that they can't live in the the toxic nature sometimes of our world they want to find a way out of it a way to a more peaceful existence so to speak a one where they could control the Fate as opposed to being controlled by the reality itself but on my way back I was sharing the experience with my wife and I said there was one thing that was absent from this funeral that nobody there at that funeral asked the question why no one said how did this happen how did this happen to this young man and the reason being that everybody there was witness to his life everyone there saw him struggle academically everyone there saw him struggle socially and like Dr Zimmerman said before it doesn't have to be this profound trauma that a person lives with but just the everyday life with a sensitive Soul it hits a person a little bit differently they process it differently they experience it differently and as a result of that there's a need to flee there's a need to run there's a need to numb to get away from that experience itself there's a wonderful researcher Dr Gabor mate and he said addiction is not the problem he said human suffering is the problem the fact that people are having a hard time in their life like the rabbi was saying so beautifully before that our the kids are involved in their own world the same way we were when we were teenagers by the way and the same way we didn't necessarily share all that information and he said what we need to do is gain access to that particular information in the Harvard center for the developing child it talks about suffering in early childhood and where that comes from and how that ultimately manifests later on just a quote from one of their studies says suffering causes a change in people's comfort-seeking behaviors Comfort seeking patterns when someone is hurting and we all know this when there's a sense of discontent we're in some type of struggle some type of fight with another there's a need to engage with another person we're looking for some degree of comfort in order to soothe and soothe that pain that we're feeling so we have to shift a little bit of a perspective we often get angry at the people who are suffering in this manner we're getting frustrated with their behaviors and we need to start looking at a little bit differently which is that the drug use itself for these individuals is their solution it is a very poor solution it is a solution that will never work in the long run but in their mind it is their solution and until you find a way to access that person and the pain that they're they're feeling and seeking to express we're going to have a hard time in treating them I remember there was a I was at a meeting once my 12-step meeting for people in recovery and if anyone who's ever been it's a wonderful place to visit I always send my students just to go I said you can't recommend a program until you've actually visited yourself so you understand what the felt sense is like and I'm walking into that room and there was a lot of hugging for anyone who's ever seen it they hug when they walk into the room they hug after they sit they say the Serenity Prayer there's a lot of love that's going around and this is often amongst people who saw each other the day before they're that committed to their life of of health and recovery and growth that they're they're a part of this program the same way we see each other and true every day but when we go to school every day we're not hugging each other maybe a fist bumper or say hello to someone but certainly not like a full-out hug I missed you man I love you so I remember asking this guy what is that about why why is there so much touching so much hugging and he looked at me with a little glint in his eye he was an old timer and he said we're making up for old time son we're making up for lost time this is not something that we had this is not something that we implicitly know inside of us and as a result of that we're seeking it today so when we talk about Solutions what do we do how do we prevent something like this it is making sure that no individual certainly within our personal orbit could possibly live a life where they would have to say to somebody else to a stranger that we're making up for lost time that they we would be there for them we would understand them we would know their inner World enough that we don't have to be curious about it or wonder too much about it and if they're going out with their friends there isn't a thousand questions on our mind as to what could they possibly be doing because we've already had some of those discussions with them prior I still remember just one more story because this man had such a profound impact on the way I see this whole phenomenon all together it was early on in my career and I was learning a little bit about drug use and why people do it and how to help them get off of it and I had this this client of mine he was homeless at the time using heroin as we know is at the top before fentanyl came around heroin was the number one killer that we had now it's number two in the world of drugs and he's using heroin and I knew nothing of heroin I didn't know what it was like I knew what it was like in the textbooks they told me what it was like but the experience of it I couldn't relate to so I asked this young man like just please describe to me what is it like you take a needle you inject it into your body and it happens automatically basically within seconds you're really really high explain that experience to me and my assumption was he was going to talk about how it felt in his body how it felt in his even in his emotional world and he went in a very different direction he said when I use this I feel as though the whole world is hugging me I feel embraced I feel as if I'm complete and I'm whole now who would make a statement like that you'd have to know this young man's life to understand that there weren't other characters there weren't other people in his life who were able to provide that for him and in the absence of that he went out looking for it he went out seeking something that would give us the feeling that we're all deserving of there's no one I know that's not deserving of care and attention and affection and love and acceptance everyone is even when we make mistakes especially when we make mistakes when we're sitting in that place of Shame and and discontent within ourselves it's precisely in those moments that we need someone to come over to us and remind us to restore us to our own sense of self and humanity and that's what we're looking for I met with parents today and they were discussing their child who's accustomed to throwing fits when our needs are not met she's a young young woman she's up 13 years old really struggling for years if something doesn't go her way she throws a tantrum it doesn't matter where it is in the streets in her house and I remember asking the question the parents one fundamental question what is it that she's seeking to convey to you what's bothering her what is it that's impacting her on the inside that she doesn't know how to express that it manifests in this fit what is it what's bothering her and they both looked at each other and they said like we're too overwhelmed and concerned with trying to manage the situation that we don't know the answer to that question and we spoke about as much as we possibly could ways to try and figure out what's going on within that person and until we could answer that we remain in the dark from helping these individuals they're largely inaccessible to us so when a kid and and we know this there are plenty of parents and I know it's a hard thing to say but there are plenty of parents even within well probably not within this room they're probably not here hopefully they're online but there are parents who themselves have are struggling through this they're not really quite sure I asked some people before I got here obviously I know the community well enough but I still want to get the numbers from the people in the community what's the percentage of even parents who themselves are dabbling in this type of way which again let's just acknowledge makes it really complicated to have a meaningful dialogue with your child when you yourself are kind of tormented it's called cognitive dissonance it becomes really hard for you to tell your child we don't do certain things when when your child is not around and not looking you yourself for engaging someone it's something that makes it really really challenging for a person so people ask you know what are the signs what are the signs that if someone is struggling someone's having a hard time what does that look like on the outside be it physical spiritual social what does it look like now the truth is for every substance there's a different sign you have substance that are referred to as uppers and a person is going to be very jittery a lot of energy there's almost a manic quality that comes along with it and then you have downers that are somewhat lethargic and kind of peaceful and calm but not very attentive slurring words things of that nature but the more meaningful feature to look at which requires a real relationship is understanding your child's baseline or not only your child but we're talking about loved ones spouses husbands wives parents sometimes understanding their Baseline to understand the way a person is on a regular Tuesday how do they feel Shabbos are they stressed are they comfortable are they relaxed and all of a sudden if you know someone's Baseline then you can start evaluating what happened what was the shift what was the change I noticed that there's a dramatic change in the way that you're behaving to me it's much more important to look at my child was doing really really well in school and then something happened and all of a sudden they started to tank but at least you knew that in the beginning they were doing well and then something bad happened so then you could reflect back and say I'm losing sight of my own child I don't know exactly who you are and what happened obviously I wouldn't use those words you always want to remain accessible and available to your child but it's it's not so much about looking at the signs and the symptoms of this is what it looks like when a person's on drugs they talk about eyes being dilated or not but rather it's knowing your child knowing the Baseline of your child how are they generally how do they generally respond to you how do they generally respond to Authority how do they speak about their friends and their relationships when they were when they go out do they generally tell you what they're doing and now all of a sudden that's changed dramatically and there's a lot of secrecy and there are other things this requires a relationship and like the rabbi was saying I couldn't say it any better the only way to engage in a relationship is to take that initiative to take those steps and to start asking questions that are a little bit challenging for us I know he was sharing a story I remember a rebbe of mine where I myself as an adolescent struggled a great deal I left religion even for a period of time and then slowly made my way back and there was one rebbe in particular who helped me come back to that place and I remember I was working at a program called the living room which is a recovery center and one day my rebby his son walks into the program a full-blown drug addict really really struggling and I remember the roles completely shifted there I was working with his son and he's reaching out to me saying could you give me some guidance what do I do and and I remember in my mind thinking back at what did my Ruby do for me how did he access me as a person and remember just reflecting that back to him and saying how did you find a way to reach me and I said I assure you it was not in the base measures it wasn't in the school it wasn't over to Fila I said it was somewhere else I said if I remember correctly it was probably some pool hall in Bend Yehuda in Israel at the time I said that's probably where you came to reach me and I said when's the last time you played pool with your son when's the last time you did something that was accessible to him not just what's comfortable with you and he stopped and he said I don't think you realize how hard this is for me I've spent my entire life doing this for other people's kids I don't know how to do it for my own I just don't he goes with you I could go it's easy because I see you as somebody else it doesn't hurt as much with my own child when I see them struggling it's just really really hard for me to access them but that's our role that's our job and it's a world that we don't quite understand I'm having conversations with my kids the other day just just the other day my daughter used a term I had no clue what it was but the first thing I did was like get online and try and figure it out turns out I'm not a Swifty it's a thing some people may know what that is I had no clue what a Swifty is but apparently Swifty's a thing and I'm not a Swifty I think it's it's could someone tell me someone knows you don't know what a Swifty that's a Taylor Swift fan I think right and she said like oh me and my friends were swifties and I'm like what's a sweet it's like a Swiffer Sweeper or something that's where my brain went and she's like no we like Taylor Swift but then it was okay now we need to listen to some Taylor Swift songs because that's what my daughter likes now will I like Taylor Swift I assure you I'm well I can't assure you but I probably won't I'm still stuck in like the Pearl Jam years but but Taylor Swift that's where my daughter's at and that's where we need to reach her that's where we need to find her in that place because that's what they need the rabbi said it so beautifully just this idea that today it's understanding the needs are met today it's really really hard it used to be pretty simple to tell the kids who had and the kids who didn't have in the classroom there were the kids who were dressed a lot better than others and it was clear you could differentiate but today we can't differentiate the needs are met kids are doing well thank God we're an affluent Community we've done well for ourselves so then we need to start thinking about well what then are the needs it's the needs of being seen the needs the ability to express oneself the need to be known the need to have somebody there who understands you and now most of the people that are understanding our children are their friends much more so than us and that means going to them and engaging on that level and as a result of that we could access them so I just share a few thoughts number one we really want to model good behavior that needs to be when we're making active Positive Choices for ourselves even as adults there was a you know friends asking us to go somewhere and this happens even with adults that it's not for us share that story with your kid let them know that there's a sense of pride in making a good decision that that's what we do as a family it's what we believe in now could you inoculate your child to make sure that they're only going to make good choices absolutely not and is it even necessary for kids to make poor choices a hundred percent it is because they'll discover something in that process too they'll discover a part of themselves in that process the goal is not Perfection the goal is that they're on a path where they know that there's someone there that could help guide them in the process having a child not having someone that that's there for them that they could talk to is is Criminal at this point and the closest people that to them are us and we need to find a way to get gain access to that there's a concept called delayed gratification delayed gratification if you look at the research is there's something that I would like there's something that I want to do but instead of getting it immediately I'm going to wait a little bit and I'm going to prepare for it I'm going to look forward to it there's something today we're not living in a world where there's a great deal of delayed gratification everything is immediate even when it comes to food which is wonderful we're all we're all just appreciating that reality just get on your phone and it's there 20 minutes later it's a wonderful world that we live in with all the luxuries that we have but when you look at the statistics on just showing delayed gratification especially when there's a child who's put into a situation where all of their friends and when I say all of their friends I really mean it they're in an environment where all of their friends are doing something it becomes nearly impossible for them to see this is not something I'm going to do I'm going to join the crowd because that's what generally what we do but if we show them somehow through our own experience that we ourselves could delay that reality that we could hold off on even on the things that we would like not because we're showing them that we could suffer but we're showing them without that if there's something we enjoy we work towards anticipating appreciating it it gives them the power to say I could hold off a little bit it'll give me a moment to think about this to contemplate this decision and often it's in the moment which leads to another idea that I know there's a lot of a lot of questions and thoughts about could I introduce these ideas if I introduce a topic to my kids I might be harming my child I mean I'm sharing something with them that they don't already know now there are certain psychological ideas that it's not beneficial for you to introduce it to a child but I'll share those ideas that's talking about suicide in a very particular way it's discussing cutting it's discussing Eating Disorders if you know that they're not describe they're dealing with that at the time so there are a certain phenomena where we could say you shouldn't necessarily be proactive talk about it to your children unless you know that it's there already there's a struggle but when it comes all the data shows when it comes to talking about prevention with drugs with alcohol with poor decision making with good decision making that rule does not apply to this issue the more kids are educated the more kids know the more kids are informed the more a kid could say hey I know that that's just a pill or that's a line of cocaine but my I just saw a video or I just read an article which said that there might be some fentanyl on it the more empowered that child is to make a good decision they need that information and the best person they could get it from really is a parent who knows them well who understands them well and that might mean going to Google or chat CPT and saying I'm about to have a really tough conversation with my kid about drugs could you give me somewhat of a script I actually put this into chat GPT it came out with a great script so go with that just go on go on that that site and and they'll give it'll help you out with that the next one is establishing and stating clear Family Values there are certain statements that we make that are this is what we do this is what we try to do this is what we aspire to be this is what we stand for my parents they taught me that that a certain there was a rule that I grew up with in my home it didn't really work so well but it's something that I I held on to there was a statement that perlmans don't lie there was that statement now we lied I lied it's something that we did but I the reality of hearing that that there's a value of we don't lie or we aspire to not lying that shapes a person it gives them some form of identity and you need to start asking ourselves real meaningful questions like what does our family represent what do we mean what do we stand for and having open discussions about that for parents to tell a child that I myself was faced with something and because there's a value that I hold dear to myself I chose not to do that it instills that child with that particular value or even if it's the opposite and a parent is let's say brave enough and say you know what I didn't necessarily have that value and I was faced with a situation and I did make the bad choice but it's something that I I've regretted and I thought about and I chose afterwards to go in a different direction that also establishes a value it's a challenging more nuanced conversation to have but establishes a value about who we are about what we believe in what we believe to be right and wrong in the world and instead of getting it from somewhere else they're going to hear it from you you want to engage them in the struggle we need to know that it's a real struggle for them when you're talking about let's say at this point 40 percent of high school students by the time they graduate or have experimented with drugs generally speaking that's the case that means that's a part of their lived experience they're faced with that reality and if we only look at it from the point of view of no that's not what we do and we don't talk about the challenge of being in that moment and what it's actually like for them then we're not engaging them we're speaking down to them or at them we're not sharing in that experience with them as was said before you're showing interest spending time trying our best and it's hard to say this one here I am tonight my family's home you know trying our best to have to spend dinner together to do things that represent where a family where a unit um and and we do things together I want to see her just end with this one study and and I think it it Paints the picture for what how we need to respond as a community but when you look at studies back in the 60s and 70s about drug use and addiction and overdose and what it was all about they they all painted to one study they would take a rat they'd put the rat in a little cage and they'd give the rat a lever and you press the lever then all of a sudden you get alcohol straight into your bloodstream or other drugs whatever it might be and what they found over time is you leave this rat in this cage with this lever and access to the drugs they'll keep pressing it usually to the point where they're going to overdose and what researchers learned from at the time was that if you give someone access to a drug it's going to kill them that was their conclusion they're going to keep pressing that lever they applied that to humans they had this one researcher Bruce Alexander came around on the late 70s and he challenged this idea and he said well maybe the issue is not that there's a cage and a lever and the drug and they keep pressing it maybe the issue is that they're isolated they're alone they're in this little cage by themselves they have no other rats to hang out with I know this sounds weird already but whatever we're going to go wrong with it we're running with the analogy they have no other rats to hang out with there's no one else to interact with you can't have dinner with anybody and yet they're they're gonna in in that moment in those set of circumstances they're going to press it until it kills them so he said let's recreate this whole thing and instead of isolated cages we're going to build a community and he called it rat Park and everything was the same they had the same levers they had the same drugs they had the same everything except that they were together as a community there were other rats to hang out with to play with whatever you do with rats whatever RADS do and what they found in those and they've done many many different variations of this two rats at a time at tons of different types of drugs that they ran and that those set of circumstances none of the rats kill themselves none of them went to that lever and said my life is not worth it it's time to go they never went there largely because they had something else protecting them and when you think about this community all you need to do is walk into this building walk into the shul at any time of day and see its vibrancy see it sense it that we're alive we take care of each other we're interested in one another to create a sense of we're doing this together and we do that in our homes as well we don't only do it as a community we create a sense of we do this together as a unit and we discuss things together even if it's hard and you sit down when you get home or you find time during the week and you say I watch this really brutal video and let me share it with you let me talk to you about some of these dangers and now I want to hear from you what's it been like for you what has come your way and it may be hard for you to answer it at this moment but I want you to know I'm interested I care and hearing I'm interested in hearing your side of the story so I could be there with you it's not my intent to completely save you it's my intent to be a companion someone who's there with you on that Journey so if you have a question or a thought or can concern you have someone loving that will look you right back in the face and say I may not be able to answer that question but I'm going to do my research and I'm going to figure it out and I'll call the right people and I'll get that answer for you just so that you don't have to be on your own and that's the greatest inoculation we have we can protect people in every regard it's not possible there's some crazy things out there and Fentanyl is one of those crazy things literally killing 200 people a day it's crazy with no anticipation no lead up no nothing it is just something that by mistake someone gets and it's the end of their life and what they didn't say in that video is that almost all of those scenes where they find those people dead there's no note there's no anticipation almost always there's a phone that's right next to them they were middle of a conversation with someone and they're just gone and that's something that we can't fully fully protect that's a reality but if we Empower our kids Empower ourselves to engage in that meaningful dialogue with them we give them the tools to begin to fight back and fighting back is developing a voice developing a stance developing an approach developing a belief system and that gives you the opportunity to live well and ultimately what we're saying in the best way possible is let's find a way we already love our children that's not being questioned whatsoever we love a little bit more by challenging ourselves to go a little bit deeper when it comes to very very difficult content and I just wish the soul a quick blessing that we find that strength and we find the love and care in our homes to give over to our children and carry out our own little version of our own little well I don't want to call it a rat Park our family just our own family that is connected and together and embracing one another and on a journey in a meaningful manner I know we have some questions so we're going to get to David [Applause] given the late hour I'm not going to formalize the question and answer period so that if anybody has a question in particular that they'd like to have answered they can come up to the stage and uh as Dr Pearlman directly or email it to the safe and we'll make sure it gets it gets answered I just want to thank everybody that came out tonight that helped with putting this night together the rain shahabar Joseph cabasso Diane Mission everybody it's safe the Rabb in it for having our back for being the wind behind ourselves and you know just really being a very willing partner in this endeavor in hopefully getting the word out and saving lives making sure that our kids our loved ones our family members are not partaking callously casually in a drug that can kill them anyway thank you everybody [Applause]