The Obama Administration announced that this week is dedicated to pharmaceutical opioid and heroin addiction epidemic awareness. President Obama has called on congress for $1.1 billion toward national heroin recovery. The Texas Tech Center for addiction and recovery is celebrating their 30th year as a program, there are currently 120 students enrolled. Senior, Chandler Barnett said he has been sober for three years in the program.
“I remember not thinking that I was hurting anybody else, I’m the one getting high,” said Barnett. “But in reality I’m hurting everyone that loves me.”
Barnett is studying community family addiction sciences due to his first hand experience with drug abuse and heroin addiction. He hopes to bring other young people to the path of recovery the same way he was brought to the Texas Tech program. The program allows for students to be admitted into the university with a lower GPA, and provides them with a second chance at education.
“There’s some things I wish I didn’t do but I’m glad that is happened, because I wouldn’t be here, my life wouldn’t be like this,” said Barnett. “I wanted to help people and I think that God listened to that.”
Dr. George Comiskey teaches classes for addictive disorders and recovery studies, as well as counsels recovering students striving for sobriety while gaining their education. Comiskey said that in this day and age a lot of doctors over prescribe pain killers to patients, causing some to seek out heroin.
“They can come be apart of a community that supports them in a safe place, they don’t need to be around people who say ‘I’ve been in some pain, here’s what I take’,” said Comiskey. “Here they work on it in a way of whats going on within them.”
Recently a photo of a couple in Ohio swept across the internet, as they were passed out in the front seat of their vehicle due to a heroin overdose, with a toddler in the backseat. Mary Joe Powell is a graduate student studying community family addiction sciences, and said she has been sober for 11 years but that the photo struck a chord.
“That photo could have very well been me, I have a child and a significant other, and that was what our lifestyle was like,” said Powell. “We may of not gotten to that point but it could have very well happened.”
