Addiction is a problem in many, many respects and first and foremost it's a primary treatable chronic disease.
23 million Americans suffer from that disease. 90% of them don't get the help they need in any given year.
Because we don't talk about this disease, because we don't acknowledge it, because we don't design solutions around it,
we're scared to death of it. We're left with words like alcoholic and drug addict and substance abuser.
Well, those are awful. Those are awful prejudicial words that really don't mean anything in medicine and science,
but they mean an awful lot to society.
This is an equal opportunity disease. It cuts across every distinction throughout society.
It was the most terrific thing that had ever happened to me, that had ever happened to my family.
I didn't know that I would survive. My family was scared to death.
For every person suffering, there are three or four other people whose lives are seriously and negatively impacted.
It leads us up to somewhere in the area of 100 million Americans have serious health consequences because of this disease.
Looking at those numbers and applying them in any community in the United States tells us that easily addiction is our nation's number one public health issue.
It is easily every community's number one public health issue.
Like many of us who've survived some kind of a potentially tragic situation in life,
I got a clear sense of purpose that I needed to do something in this field.
If you have diabetes or certain forms of cancer, nobody is judging you as you're talking about your issues
and you get world-class service in a world-class facility and if the disease is of a chronic nature,
that service delivery extends over a very long period of time.
That's the world that we need to get to with addiction.
Our model is designed to do a number of things, but I think first and foremost,
its purpose is to help people initiate recovery.
So we take the mystery out of it in a very friendly and accommodating way.
Oftentimes the person answering the phone or responding to the email is somebody who's lived through this disease.
So the shared experience is wonderfully inviting and comforting.
And we're trying to make it as easy as possible.
The visibility that we've created in this community about and around the disease of addiction is pretty incredible in three short years.
We're not aware of any other communities, any other efforts that have been similarly bold.
There's been a lot of wonderful results and a lot of impressive numbers and so forth,
people coming forward and getting help and I have no doubt that they've been life saved as a result of our model.
In order to fulfill our mission we have to scale up and we have to build a national model
and take it to other communities in order to continue to attract the resources to make this all possible.
We take a lot of comfort in that, knowing that we're creating exactly the type of organization
that is necessary to move these needles that have been stuck on the empty for so long.
