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Bristol Lifestyle Recovery Center needs our help

Bristol Herald Courier - 4/16/2017

Today is Easter, a Christian holiday often celebrated by family gatherings, egg hunts and feasts. But when a person is addicted to drugs, it's easy to miss those opportunities for memories, especially if one's participation is no longer possible as a result of drug use.

That's why we'd like to take the time today to applaud the introduction of the Bristol Lifestyle Recovery Center.

It's no secret that the mammoth level of drug addiction in our region is staggering. Last year, the Virginia Department of Health declared opioid abuse a public health emergency in the state. In 2014, more Tennesseans died from drug overdoses than from car accidents.

The need for recovery centers in the area does not require an argument. A long-term recovery center like the Bristol Lifestyle Recovery, opening May 15 and one of the few in the area, is an even more welcome addition.

By intending to serve the local drug-addicted population with housing, counseling and tools, Bristol Lifestyle Recovery will provide residents with an advantageous transition back to productive citizens. The center will also contribute to our vitality as a community: our health, our economy and our morale.

By helping to reduce the epidemic's victims via a support system for pregnant detoxed women, the center will start a path for newborns marked with more stability and fewer possibilities of long-term health complications.

And by working with the court system, the center will help us reunite with loved ones who succumbed to - and survived - the abyss of drug addiction.

Chances are that you, the reader, know someone or know someone who knows someone that has been touched by the addiction epidemic.

That's what makes community support and involvement for Bristol Lifestyle Recovery now more pertinent and necessary. If we want to see a reversal in our drug addiction numbers, we each have a responsibility to endeavor toward it.

Donating to the center is by far the easiest method to contribute and yields the greatest amount of benefit. The center's website, bristollifestylerecovery.org, allows online giving and even the option of using text donations. The latter also offers more say in what donations are used for. Texting your monetary amount followed by a type of fund (for example, life skills) will direct it to that cause; a responding text will provide other funds if the texted one doesn't match one on the list.

Volunteering would also improve the center's prosperity beginning from its launch. The center is roughly a month away from its official opening, and as of the date of this publication, there is still much to do - and many opportunities for us to help. According to their website, the center still needs assistance with moving furniture, painting, landscaping and kitchen inventory. More specialized projects include electrical repair, toilet repair, shower installation and care of stainless steel kitchen items.

No one would doubt the impact that a collective effort for the center and those they serve would have.

If we collaborate to give the center the most promising start possible, we help ensure its own long-term success - and ours.