University of Utah School on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
Having always
lived in Iowa, I never thought I would be travelling to Salt Lake City to
attend the internationally recognized School on Alcoholism and Drug
Dependencies at the University of Utah. The week has really opened my eyes to
the issues of alcoholism and drug abuse in the United States. Though my time in Salt Lake City was short, it
was packed with new and amazing experiences.
I met students from all over the country, developed better relationships
with the students from my own school, learned about abuse issues through many
amazing speakers, comedians, and meetings, learned about native American
culture through traditional dancing, dined at local restaurants, and
experienced the Utah Arts Festival.
I would rate
the overall quality of my experience at the School as phenomenal. As I grow older, I find that there are fewer
and fewer experiences that change my perceptions of the world around me. The School drastically altered how I view the
issue of drug abuse. I used to view drug
abuse as something to catch through inventory at the pharmacy or searching for
the patient in the current Prescription Monitoring Program in Iowa. I now think about not just fighting drug
abuse but rather using it as an opportunity to help and provide resources to
patients who may be suffering from it.
My level of empathy for patients has increased drastically since
attending the school, though I feel that I am still very limited in the help
that I am able to provide for those patients.
The School did
a great job of including some humorous sessions during the week to provide some
emotional relief to the participants.
The hike and the garden walk were also great options to include some
physical activity during the week. The experience
that made the greatest impression on me was the willingness of individuals to
share their stories at the group therapy session. First of all, it always caught my attention
when individuals stood up and said their name and identified themselves as an
abuser in front of a room full of strangers.
I am not entirely sure why but hearing this self-identification made me
a little bit uncomfortable. This is probably
because of how honest they were being with themselves and others and I recognized
that it must have taken a lot of courage and determination to reach to that
point. As different individuals worked
through their various issues, I could definitely feel a great level of love and
empathy in the room. All the attendees
were providing an incredible amount of emotional support. During one of these meetings a pharmacy
student stood up and told everyone that today her mom is sentenced to
prison. It was really powerful to hear
her story and experience her strength because I had noticed her positive nature
previously during the conference and would never have thought that she was
facing these kinds of struggles. It
surprised me to see how many people were personally affected by abuse issues
either through their own addiction or through the addiction of their family
members. I now recognize that preventing abuse and helping individuals escape
the cycle of abuse helps not only the person but all their loved ones around
them. From the single experience of
various individuals being open and honest and willing to share their story, I
have learned an incredible amount about the impact of drug abuse.
Prior to
attending the School, I had always thought that the drug problems in the United States were primarily due to illegal
drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine, and learning from one of the speakers
that prescription drug abuse was an even bigger problem was quite
shocking. This has made me realize that
as a pharmacy student I need to be more vigilant in observing the red flags of
drug abuse. I have realized the importance
of doing inventory on controlled substances to prevent drug abuse, but the
hardest aspect of this will be identifying patients who may be abusing while
still trying to have empathy for patients who are in actual pain. Hearing stories of pharmacists who abused
drugs and ways that they placed themselves in positions that would be in charge
of the controlled medications showed me some of signs I should watch for and demonstrated
that everyone is susceptible to this problem no matter how intelligent,
educated, or important they are within the company.
Perhaps the
most interesting part of the week has been listening to the Alcoholics
Anonymous and the Al-anon to actually hear the stories and struggles of abusers
and family members. The meetings were very emotional and helped me develop much
needed empathy that I needed for patients. The stories of people trying to quit
on their own and failing and the support that the group provides over the years
is really wonderful. Some of the
seemingly happiest people at the conference had the courage to stand up and
tell their stories to a room full of strangers.
The level of trust, honesty, and compassion in the room really touched
my heart. I never realized that not only
the patient but also so many people in the patient’s life are affected by their
abuse problem. A single abuse problem can
leave a trail of anger, resentment, and broken relationships in the whole
family.
Another major
concept that I learned about was recognizing addiction as a disease rather than
a choice. Prior to the School, I had never really understood addiction and
certainly did not think of it as a disease.
As strange as it sounds, I had always thought that people chose to do
drugs repeatedly until eventually they eventually became addicted. The session
in which Steve Moore described a cat and it’s craving for milk was really
phenomenal in understanding how an addict thinks about his addiction and also
described some possible scenarios of how an addict might relapse into addiction
by attending milk festivals or going to the grocery store and walking into the
milk aisle.
An idea that
was briefly mentioned during one of the sessions that stuck with me is that
when patients come to the pharmacy, we give them medications to help them, but
when an addict comes to the pharmacy, we are supposed to kick them out instead
of helping them. This is something that
is inherently wrong with the system when addressing abuse issues and more needs
to be done to help the patients rather than sending them away to search for an
even worse way to feed their addiction. In conjunction with this idea, it is important
to teach patients about proper storage of medications when they are not using the
medications to prevent family members, friends, or burglars from stealing the
medications.
Another topic
I learned at the School was not about drug abuse but rather about Native
American Culture through traditional dancing.
The dance started with flute music and was followed by beating drums
with an explanation of the various dances that the dancers were doing. There were many types of dances which were
the men’s traditional, men’s fancy, women’s traditional, women’s fancy,
friendship dance, and my favorite the trick dance. It was very hot that evening and it was
impressive that the dancers were wearing the traditional dress and dancing in
the heat so that we could learn about some of the unique characteristics of their
culture.
Overall the
school informed us about the different aspects of addiction. We learned about the science behind addiction
through the pathophysiology of addiction and introduction to addiction issues
session, the group meetings and therapy sessions helped us develop our
knowledge of personal stories and develop our empathy, the case study of a
recovering pharmacist showed us how even those that are highly educated can be
affected by this issue. The pharmacy
section also helped individuals speak about their personal abuse issues and
abuse issues of family members to help those who are being personally affected by
this issue.
The School included three general
session speakers with Chuck Jackson, David Mee Lee, and Jason Hewlett as speakers. It was also great to see various individuals
being recognized for their commitment to this field through the various awards
at the general sessions.
In Chuck
Jackson’s session, we began with some physical exercises to help wake everyone
up that morning. He then discussed his
town in Oklahoma to allow us to help us understand him better and concluded the
presentation with talking about a box that represented abuse issues. The box
had always been in the distance but as time progressed more and more people
around him were affected by abuse issues and the box had come to the forefront
and he recognized that he needed to deal with the box.
David Mee
Lee’s session was more scientific, and he discussed the advantages and disadvantages of recognizing
addiction as a brain disease. By recognizing addiction as a disease, society goes from punishing the
addict to help treat them out of addiction.
The disadvantage of recognizing addiction as
a disease is that it allows the addict to escape responsibility for their addiction. The session helped me realize that though
recognizing addiction as a disease is important,
there are certainly downfalls associated with this.
By far the
most unique and perhaps even the weirdest general session of the week was by
Jason Hewlett. In this session, he
shared how he discovered his talent through a choir teacher and how he rejected
a Las Vegas contract in order to do the work that he values. Though much of his
presentation focused on Jason’s singing talents, his main message was how to
recognize your own uniqueness to help make yourself standout and successfully develop
your own path in life. He also encouraged us to be extraordinary no matter how
ordinary a task we might be doing and he provided a great example of an airport
shuttle driver who did just that.
I loved my time in Utah at the School and encourage all to attend next year!
