Families Against Narcotics

22
May
2023

WLEN Interview with Families Against Narcotics Board Members Lacey Jung & Ben Trevino

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Woman’s Voice: This special program is brought to you by the Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition. Guests provide information about upcoming events, resources available, and the many ways to help reduce substance use and promote a healthy Lenawee. 

Kathy Williams: This is Kathy Williams and with me on tonight’s program is Lacey Jung and Ben Trevino.  And we’re going to be talking about a program that just launched. Its acronyms are FAN. But it stands for Families Against Narcotics. Lacey, tell us a little bit about what the program’s all about. 

Lacey Jung: So Families Against Narcotics, or FAN, is a Michigan wide organization that provides alternative solutions to individuals who are impacted by substance use and provides resources to families who are also impacted by substance abuse.  We’re going to go over a couple of our programs. One being our launch program, Hope Not Handcuffs, and we’ll tell you a little bit about what these programs can offer to our community. 

Kathy Williams: So Ben, it sounds like a very intriguing program. A lot of people are looking for extra help, not only for their selves, but for their families.  It, the whole community is, is impacted by drug abuse. Can you tell us about some of the programs available then? 

Ben Trevino: Right. Yeah. So there are a lot of people in the community that are impacted by substance abuse, and we’re trying to give a different approach to the war on drugs that we’ve been fighting for 50 something years now, and offering alternative solutions and right now we’re probably not going to see any headway as far as changing statutes and laws at the state or federal level. So we can change things at the community level. And so, like Lacey said, our launch program is Hope Not Handcuffs, and it’s simply offering people a place to get help. Any participating law enforcement office like APD or the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office, somebody can go to the police and they can get help, no questions asked. You’re not going to get run for a background check. They’re not going to search for warrants. They’re not going to interrogate you. They’re just going to simply connect you with somebody that can get you help that you’re looking for. Connect with resources or treatment services and the people that help facilitate those services are called angels.

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: And anyone can be an angel. Anybody that has an interest in it, you don’t need any credentials, you don’t need any sort of background. If you want to help, you can help. And we will give out the phone number and email at the end if you want to reach out for that.  And so we’re, we already have our first angel, actually somebody that participates in the local recovery community and she’s excited to be a part of it. 

Kathy Williams: Lacey, one of the other programs then is Navigate? 

Lacey Jung: Yeah. So Navigate is a program we can launch within our community that helps connect people in recovery with a coach.  It can connect families to a peer who can give them resources and be there to assist them in their recovery. 

Ben Trevino: Right, so there’s two different types of coaches. There’s the recovery coach, which is somebody that is in active recovery, used to be in active addiction, and has been abstaining for at least two years from their drug of choice.  And then we have peer family coaches, which are people that are typically impacted by a family member that went through active addiction or is no longer with us, and they sort of have that boots on the ground firsthand experience with, you know, being a family member impacted by addiction. So that’s the two separate types of peers that we’re going to have working with us.  And, and if anybody’s interested in that, once again, at the end, we’re going to give out the details on how to connect us. 

Kathy Williams: So it’s all about perspective. Everyone has a different perspective of how they’ve been affected, how they’ve been impacted, and this Families Against Narcotics is trying to pull all that information together then to assist someone, or even as a coach, it would be beneficial to the person as a coach to give back. 

Ben Trevino: Yeah, it really is. Everyone finds a lot of… it’s a rewarding experience to be a recovery coach. I’m personally a recovery coach and although it’s difficult and a lot of times the outcomes are pretty dismal, the wins that you do have are really impactful. And, it’s, it’s quite the experience to help somebody get out of their active addiction. 

Kathy Williams: So there’s lots of ways then that our listeners can find out more about being a part of FAN, Families Against Narcotics. Lacey, what are some of the ways they can connect?

Lacey Jung: So we hold our FAN Forum meetings every fourth Tuesday of every month at 7:00 PM.  The public is welcome to join our Forum. It’s held at the Adrian Public Library in the basement. 

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Lacey Jung: We invite anyone who is interested in learning more information or being a part of helping these programs launch to come out and see us at the library. 

Kathy Williams: And Ben, is there some other ways they can find out more information then? 

Ben Trevino: Yes, so the official Lenawee FAN phone number is (517) 939-9879.  You can also contact us by email. You can text that number also. You can contact us by email at Lenawee@FamiliesAgainstNarcotics.org, or you can go to the FamiliesAgainstNarcotics.org website and on the dropdown menu for locations, you can choose “Lenawee”. That’ll have all our information up there.  And, yeah, like, like Lacey said, we are meeting the fourth Tuesday of every month. The very first launch is going to be this coming Tuesday, the 23rd at 7:00 PM.  If you are in active addiction, if you are in active recovery, if you know somebody in recovery, if you’ve been impacted by somebody, if you are… have strong opinions about this or ideas, I think you should be there.  You should really represent your perspective on the community. And that means everyone within the sound of my voice is going to be there at the library in the basement. 

Kathy Williams: There you go. 

Ben Trevino: Yes. Tuesday. And I’ve only told you about a few of the programs.  If you want to have some input on what programs we’re launching next, apart from Hope Not Handcuffs, there is a survey on the website that you can take that we’re collecting data from the community to see what’s most important to you. 

Kathy Williams: Well, Lacey and Ben, you’re wonderful ambassadors for the FAN program and we appreciate you sharing the information with our listeners.

Ben Trevino: Yeah, thank you for having me. 

Lacey Jung: Thank you. Thank you for having us. 

Woman’s Voice: The Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition supported by funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Thank you for listening. New messages air on the second and fourth Monday each month at 6:15 PM.  You can listen to this program as a podcast under the “on air audio” tab on WLEN.com and get more information at DrugPreventionLenawee.com.

Posted by Admin in Interviews
13
Feb
2023

WLEN Interview with Families Against Narcotics Public Relations & Social Media Coordinator Ben Trevino

 

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Woman’s Voice: This special program is brought to you by the Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition. Guests provide information about upcoming events, resources available, and the many ways to help reduce substance use and promote a healthy Lenawee. 

Kathy Williams: This is Kathy Williams and with me on tonight’s program is Ben Trevino, and Ben is the Public Relations and Social Media Coordinator for a new group called FAN, F A N are the initials. Ben, thanks for joining us. We’re anxious to learn some more about the Families Against Narcotics group. 

Ben Trevino: Yeah, Kathy, thanks for having me. 

Kathy Williams: So, tell us, you know, and the group is in its infancy getting set up. Tell us what the goals and the future issues that you’re gonna be dealing with.  How, how does this affect our community?

Ben Trevino: So, FAN is a nationwide network of different chapters in individual communities, and every chapter has its own stated mission and goals. But ours would be to fill in the gaps in some of the social services and figure out what exactly families need as a place to turn to first…

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: When they’re looking for help with people dealing with, drug addiction mainly, alcoholism too. And just having that resource and being able to connect them with the appropriate people for treatment. 

Kathy Williams: So, would they still start at LCMHA at the Lenawee Community Mental Health Authority, to get connected to FAN, or how’s that work?

Ben Trevino: Yeah, so they, they can start there and we might refer them there, but where they would really start is calling the FAN phone number, which we don’t have yet. 

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: We will soon, but we’ll, here or going to the fan website. 

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: And having that is just like, almost like calling what, what do they call it? 211.

Kathy Williams: Like 211. 

Ben Trevino: Okay. So it’ll be like a 211 for drug addiction. 

Kathy Williams: Okay.

Ben Trevino: So they can just turn to us and we can guide them through this landscape, which can be kind of tricky at first. 

Kathy Williams: Yes. Well, there is a lot of, or there are a lot of resources in our area, but like with 211, it’s a good starting spot.  So, it kind of gives you a big cafeteria choices of where do I need to go? What do I need to do? 

Ben Trevino: Right. 

Kathy Williams: So, FAN would be similar though for people with substance abuse issues? 

Ben Trevino: Right. And then we’ll also have different programs which will implement harm reduction strategies. 

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: So, things have been shaping up differently, I guess over the past 50 years.  We kind of fought a war on drugs and drugs won that war. So, we can congratulate them now. 

Kathy Williams: Yeah. 

Ben Trevino: You know, the, the idea was to lock everyone up and you know, it, it was so bad that even when they are locked up in prison, they’re still doing drugs. Like everything is just a wash and, and drugs.  So, instead of locking people up, we’re looking for different alternatives that we can give, that we can reduce the harm that addicts are doing to themselves and to the broader society. 

Kathy Williams: Right. 

Ben Trevino: While driving engagement. So, seeing them more often as opposed to just when they come to the emergency room. 

Kathy Williams: Right.

Ben Trevino: And being able to use those program to get them into treatment, just like a, a funnel them into the places where we need them.  As opposed to waiting for them to get locked up or to, you know, show up to the emergency room with a, with a, you know, potential overdose or some other life-threatening thing. 

Kathy Williams: Right. Or a court order for to participate in different things. 

Ben Trevino: Right. 

Kathy Williams: So you’ll, you’ll be able to better connect and walk beside them then to kind of help them navigate how to not relapse. And will they also help them to navigate how to go through detox and that kind of thing?  Or where’s that line gonna be? 

Ben Trevino: Right. So that will be more with the providers.

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: The treatment providers. And we have a network, not locally, but maybe that’s something in the future, I don’t know. 

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: But you know, sort of in our adjacent counties, Washtenaw and Monroe, that we can refer people to. And then once they’re out of treatment, out of that residential setting… 

Kathy Williams: Okay.

Ben Trevino: Then they’re back with us and we can refer them to the safe spaces like Pathways Engagement Center.

Kathy Williams: Okay. 

Ben Trevino: Or CMH or InterConnections. These places where we know that they can go for support and just about any time that they need to. 

Kathy Williams: Well, I’m the board president for Neighbors of Hope, and we have our men’s center, which should be opened up again soon. But we also have a women’s and children’s homeless center.  And we take in homeless people who have struggled with addiction after they’ve been through their detox to give them that extra help that they need. So, this will be a great resource for, for groups like that as well. 

Ben Trevino: Right. And part of that broader mission is making that allyship with all the different community partners.  And right now, now that we’ve formed the Board as the first step, we have people from all different professions, you know, the police, the fire, the EMS, the legal, judicial system, the medical professionals, people in social services, former addicts, people with families of former addicts and all, everything, like it’s a broad spectrum of people from all different areas.  And we’re looking to partner with just about anyone that can help us serve these broader goals. 

Kathy Williams: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that’s a great idea too, because then you’re, you’re not out to duplicate services. You’re out to help streamline the services to the people that actually need them at the time they need them.

Ben Trevino: Forming connections. Yeah. Yeah. And, and filling in the gaps. 

Kathy Williams: Exactly. Well, Ben, you know, in the process you’re putting up a website and I’m sure you’ll have a Facebook and a phone number and all that stuff. But in the meantime, for our listeners to be able to send some information to you, how can they do that? 

Ben Trevino: So yeah, we are in the process of setting up a Facebook group, a website on the national FAN site, and probably some other social media presences.  But in the, in the meantime, if people want more information or just to offer some feedback about what they think would be pertinent to our mission and goals, they can contact me. And my email address is BTrevino, so that’s the letter B, and then T R E V I N O at L C M H A.org. That stands for Lenawee Community Mental Health Authority. 

Kathy Williams: Well, Ben, I look forward to having you back on, you know, at some future date to get an update of how things have transpired and how effective the group is working within our community.

Ben Trevino: Yeah, I’d love to come back when we’re closer to launch. 

Kathy Williams: Thank you. Thanks so much, Ben. 

Woman’s Voice: The Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition supported by funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Thank you for listening. New messages air on the second and fourth Monday each month at 6:15 PM.  You can listen to this program as a podcast under the “on air audio” tab on WLEN.com and get more information at DrugPreventionLenawee.com.

Posted by Admin in Interviews