Summit looks at addiction struggles
After his son Brian died by suicide, Gary Mendell said he found himself lying in bed, staring at a copy of the Serenity Prayer that his wife had framed for him.
“God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
It was the only thing that kept him going in those darkest days. He couldn’t change his son’s story, which ended at the age of 25 after years of battling addiction.
But as the months went by and the grief changed — never lifted, but changed — he started thinking about
the second line.
“The courage to change those I can.”
So, after a long career as an executive in the hotel industry, he took a radically different turn.
Mendell, of Connecticut, founded Shatterproof, a nonprofit he conceived as the “American Cancer Society of addiction,” to try to address some of the forces that contributed to his son’s death. He spoke Thursday at an addiction forum sponsored by The Oklahoman.
The cancer connection comes through when Mendell talks about Mikey, a friend of Brian’s.
Mikey and his family didn’t have an easy journey when he was diagnosed with cancer, but they knew where to go to receive appropriate treatment, they felt comfortable turning to friends and family for emotional support, and the community rallied to raise money for medical expenses and to show their love.
When Brian was struggling with addiction, Mendell said he had no idea what treatment should involve and thought he’d raised his son with a character flaw. He and wife told few people, and no one showed up with casseroles and hugs.
“Brian just found silence,” he said. “Stigma extinguishes the very hope and self-respect people with this disease need to overcome” addiction.
Addiction changes a person’s brain in a way that makes it impossible to resist urges and to follow through on a decision not to use drugs, Mendell said.
The behaviors addiction causes make it hard to empathize with people who have it, but it’s vital to try, he said.
It was only after Brian died that Mendell found out that as many as 10 percent of people have a substance use disorder at some point in their lives — and that young people are at an elevated risk.
He also learned that studies have established that medications and individual therapy are the best treatments for opioid addiction, but many treatment programs don’t offer them.
“How could we have something so big, that’s mostly about our children, there’s information out there that could save lives tomorrow, and it’s being stigmatized and not used?” he said.
Part of Shatterproof’s work is developing a report card, so families can quickly tell if a treatment program’s offerings are backed up by evidence, Mendell said. Another front is holding public events, like the Rise Above Addiction run, to reduce the shame and secrecy surrounding substance use, he said.
Ultimately, in Brian’s case, shame proved as lethal as drugs themselves.
When Mendell last saw his son Brian alive, when they were talking on the back porch after a family cookout, Brian hinted at the effect other people’s perceptions had on him.
“He said, ‘Dad, I hope someday people will see I’m not a bad person. I’m a good person with a bad disease,’” he said. “That someday Brian talked about has not come near fast enough.”