A Fresh Look at an Age-old Problem –Book Review

By David Alex Schulz, CHP

Addiction to painkillers is a perpetual problem: even a war between Britain and China over opium caused barely a hiccup in its usage. But anyone whose understanding of the issue was formed before the current opioid crisis … indeed, before the COVID pandemic … needs to reassess from a new perspective, and that’s precisely what journalist Sam Perez offers in her book, “Deviate from Denial: Erasing the Stigma of Addiction and Recovery Through Inspirational Stories.”

The author’s family story provides authority to serve as a guide to the world of use, abuse, hopelessness and hopefulness of today’s drug addict.

“At the beginning of my senior year of high school, my parents made a decision that changed my family’s life forever. They opened DV8 Kitchen, a bakery that is more than just a restaurant. It is also a second chance employment opportunity, which means that 100 percent of the people working there are in recovery from substance use disorder. Before DV8, my parents had been restaurant owners for more than a decade, and over ten years they lost thirteen employees … They were dead—all thirteen from drug and alcohol overdoses.”

“My parents saw this massive problem within the industry which breeds partying. They were deeply affected by the deaths they’d experienced and knew they wanted to find a way to address the pattern of fatal addiction so common among their employees. They knew they wanted to try to fix it, but they weren’t sure how.”

The book’s entry point is not that of the recovering DV8 employees but of its owners – the authors’ parents – and the incipient alcohol abuse prevalent in Food and Beverage Industry.

“My mom helped my dad realize he had a problem. Before long, he enrolled in a rehabilitation program for his alcoholism. This disease affected both my parents. It transformed the early part of their marriage and was responsible for many deep-rooted problems in their relationship.”

No quick solutions is the author’s refrain from experience. Rehab programs experience recidivism as often as success, but after bouncing around the country from Los Angeles and New Orleans to Orlando and Dallas, the restauranteur brought his family to Lexington, Kentucky and spiritual epiphany.

The epiphany? That all behavior they defined as making themselves “good Christians” were transactional activities, comprising a quality of quid pro quo

“You need to be more relational,” she pleaded. “It would benefit you, our family, our community, our business, and your faith if you focused on building relation ships, not just turning profit! I promise.”

It triggered devo tion to exploring solutions to substance abuse. No easy answers: losing employees to addiction meant a job alone wasn’t sufficient for rehab; and recovery without a job leads directly to recidivism. Both are necessary, neither are sufficient. Thus, “DV8,” a restaurant that balances the two, devoted to the recovery of its employees.

The restaurant serves as springboard for a deep, up-to-date dive into the storied lives of abusers, how they were introduced to addiction, and routes out of the wilderness what worked and what didn’t.

“Stories of Strength and Hope,” the core of the book, pulls no punches. “Addiction doesn’t discriminate” is relentlessly driven home. No economic class, race, religion, or educational attainment precludes addiction. A college student whose tooth-extractions led to reliance on prescribed Percocet frames the first story.

“I was not doing them every single day.” She paused, taking time to recount the details to me with precision and accuracy. “And then all of a sudden I was.”

Percocet turned into $160-a-day black-market OxyContin. Before long, pharmaceuticals led to heroin. But not before the addict attempted cold-turkey recovery. “At three in the morning I woke up totally drenched in sweat and feeling like I was going to vomit and like my skin was just crawling off.”

While it's no surprise to our readership that today a sizable number of addicts are initiated through prescribed medicine, the excesses of the 20th Century have left significant hangovers in new generations, for whom drug abuse is all they’ve ever known. Ecstasy led to crack led to speed and eventually all roads lead to heroin; broken homes lead to more broken homes, and violence is often an aspect of abuse. “Breaking the cycle of addiction can be hard when it’s all you’ve ever known, it isn’t impossible but it’s what they grew up around,” says Perez. “It’s all they’ve seen. It should be met with an attempt to understand and help, not an automatic judgment.”

The need to refrain from judgmentalism is another recurring lesson, corollary to the maxim that addiction doesn’t discriminate. Following Perez detailing, in very personal terms, the life experiences of successful recoveries, unresolved cases, or terminal addictions. She offers her observations on how the pandemic and associated lock-down exacerbated prescription painkiller reliance and the links between mental health and substance abuse issues.

She reviews today’s programs for recovery (including Alcoholics Anonymous, residential programs, outpatient clinics and drug courts) leading to a discussion of harm reduction methods for those addicts nearing turning points – but not quite there yet.

Perez closes with the observation, “Drug use and abuse shouldn’t be taboo. We’ve swept it under the rug for far too long. It’s time we start talking about the complexities of substance use disorder, not trivialize the simple yes or no choice the “Say No to Drugs” campaign might make it appear to be. Approaching the topic of drug addiction with full transparency and focusing on recovery without judgment is the quickest way to work toward a solution.”

I grew up five blocks from Manhattan’s notorious Needle Park, and thought I had a handle on the situation. I was wrong. For the freshest look at drug abuse in today’s society, with both anecdotal and well sourced scientific research, check out Sam Perez’s “Deviate from Denial: Erasing the Stigma of Addiction and Recovery Through Inspirational Stories” (New Degree Press).