Public outreach part of Alcohol, Drug Awareness Week, Nov. 23-30

Al-Anon District 10 public outreach is underway as part of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Awareness Week, Nov. 23-30.

The committee has unique goals for Alcohol and Drug Awareness Week. A poster has been installed on public transit buses in Charlottetown.

In addition, 300 “Al-Anon Faces Alcoholism 2019”, forums are the annual public outreach message for Al-Anon Family groups. Each of the forums will have an Al-Anon contract number on the back. This is Islandwide and features the Al-Anon website. AlAnon members distribute these widely throughout their local communities, where people in need of the Al-Anon program can find them and learn how Al-Anon could help them.

Therapists, addiction counsellors and other professionals share this with their patients and clients, to encourage them to go to an Al-Anon meeting. New members are encouraged to go to six consecutive meetings.

Public outreach initiated putting on Al-Anon meetings at our Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Unit 9, mental health ward. They are held every Sunday at 6:30 p.m. for patients who wish to attend and learn about the program. Literature is left there also.

Alcoholism is a widely recognized, as a chronic, progressive primary disease, which can be arrested by abstinence from alcohol but cannot be cured. Alcoholism is also a family disease that affects everyone who has contact with the problem drinker. Their drinking causes problems in their lives and the lives they touch. In Al-Anon, participants learn that they did not cause and cannot control and cannot cure alcoholism. They find their own recovery from the effects of alcoholism through the Al-Anon Twelve Step Program; which often has a positive impact on themselves and their families and workers.