Parents & Kids

Heroin in Darien 4: Heroin’s Powerful Addictiveness & How To Break Loose

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Heroin and opioid painkillers are so powerfully addictive that no method of ending the addiction is 100 percent effective, although treatment specialists have ways of increasing the odds of success. According to Dr. John Douglas, clinical director of the Outpatient Addiction Program at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, drug therapy doesn’t always work, and counseling by itself doesn’t always work — but taken together, the success rate is pretty high. Highly addictive

Heroin and other opioids “are some of the most addictive drugs in the world,” Douglas said at the Nov. 5 panel discussion“Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien” held at Town Hall. “That term, ‘addiction’ is, I think slippery for people.

Parents & Kids
deSpoelberch

Heroin in Darien 3: ‘I’m a Darien Resident in Recovery’

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Nick deSpoelberch had it all — fine job as dean of students at a prestigious New York City private school, wife, kids and nice house back in Darien — until he didn’t, undone by heroin. Then he recovered. Now the Darien resident is an addiction and mental health counselor in Bridgeport making a third of what he used to make. But he’s free of heroin and happy. deSpoelberch related his story Nov.

Parents & Kids
Drug Panel 2015

Heroin in Darien 2: Signs of Addiction in Your Kid & How to Reduce the Risk

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With cheap heroin becoming easily available in and near Darien, you can do a number of things to make it less likely that your child will become addicted to it or prescription opioid drugs similar to it, according to experts at a recent panel discussion in Darien. Advice from members of the panel discussion, “Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien” (which Darienite.com is combining with previously reported advice from Police Chief Duane Lovello) at seemed to fall into three categories:

Preventing opioid prescription medications from getting into the child’s hands at home (after a doctor prescribed them either for the child or for a family member);
Countering the influence of your child’s friends who could lead him or her into drug use;
Taking more active steps when your suspicions are aroused. Parents should also recognize that athletes at school also have an incentive to abuse pain medications to keep playing a sport after an injury. __________

This article, the second in a series “Heroin in Darien” based on the “Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien” panel discussion on Nov. 5, looks at what parents, potential addicts and others can do to prevent addiction or begin to deal with it.

Community Organizations
Slide 1 Whyte 11-5-15

Heroin in Darien 1: How Bad is Heroin Use in Our Town? This Bad

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A 21-year-old without a pulse. A 19-year-old, eyes rolled back, lying on the side of a road. The same young man had been revived from an overdose two days before. These incidents happened in the past two weeks, police say. In Darien, according to police, heroin and related painkillers are wrecking lives of addicts and traumatizing their families at a faster pace in the past year, shocking veteran detectives, putting Post 53 teenagers into disturbing scenes and contributing to crimes in town.

Community Organizations

Heroin in Darien: Part 2 with Panel of Recovery Experts, Cops, Doctors

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The second of two presentations on heroin use in Darien continues on Thursday night, Nov. 5, at Darien Town Hall Auditorium. The two-part series, sponsored by Darien Depot and Darien Police Department, is scheduled to last an hour, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Town Hall, 2 Renshaw Road. The panel discussion, geared especially for parents, is titled “Straight Talk-Lifting the Veil: Facing the Hidden Drug Epidemic in Darien – Part 2.” The presentation panel includes:

Ingrid Gillespie – Communities4Action
Roody Joseph, M.Ed., LPC – Center for Discovery and Change
John Douglas, M.D. – Silver Hill Hospital
Officer Michael Cummings – Darien Police Department
Sargent TJ White – Darien Police Department
Nick deSpoelberch, Recovery Speaker

Space is limited, please register for the program at dariendepot.eventbrite.com.

Life Solution Center
Depot

POSTPONED: StraightTalk: Empowering Parents Establishing, Maintaining Healthy Control

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THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED to a date that hasn’t been set, according to this tweet from the Life Solution Center of Darien. Wednesday, Oct. 28 — 7 to 8 p.m.

Most Middle School parents agree that a day at the office is far easier than one on the home front! Maud Purcell and Greg Doll — from The Life Solution Center of Darien — lead an informal and interactive parent discussion about how it is possible to establish healthy control over your kids by seeing and enforcing age-appropriate boundaries and rules, and providing lessons in character development.