By William Morris, Owatonna People’s Press

OWATONNA — The message for southeastern Minnesota leaders who attended a listening forum Thursday was simple: Recovery programs for people fighting drug addition work, and more programs are needed.

The forum was sponsored by Recovery is Happening, a nonprofit headquartered in Rochester, and was attended by judges, law enforcement and probation officers and nonprofit directors from Freeborn, Steele, Rice and Mower counties. The panel gathered at Owatonna High School to hear Recovery is Happening leaders share the results of a community needs assessment in the four-county area, followed by listening to a number of people share their own stories of recovery from substance abuse disorders.

“We want everyone to know that in southeastern Minnesota, recovery is happening,” said Tiffany Hunsley, executive director of Recovery is Happening. “I speak out loudly and proudly about my recovery, because recovery has given my family new hope and a new foundation for the future.”

That theme, of speaking out and combating shame and anonymity, was a common thread through the event. Program Coordinator Philip Rutherford shared a video from one recovery community organization celebrating people in recovery speaking out, and then showed a presentation describing the results of a series of surveys Recovery is Happening has conducted on recovery options in the area.

“That is part of a [Department of Human Services] grant for the 11 southeastern counties of Minnesota,” he said. “DHS actually identified the area, and we applied for a grant for programming in those counties. It’s being administered by DHS, but it’s actually a federal grant, from [the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration].”

Recovery is Happening broke that area down further into three groups and then went into each set of counties with surveys to gauge the awareness and ability to respond to substance abuse issues in each region.

The numbers show that Steele, Waseca, Freeborn and Mower have a ways to go. On each metric measured, the region ranked between a three and a four on the nine-level scale used by the surveys. That puts the public awareness in the area somewhere between “vague awareness” and “preplanning,” Rutherford said.

In particular, he said the group was surprised that only 43 percent of those surveyed said drug or alcohol problems were affecting them personally, much lower than in the other areas surveyed, which he said is just not true.

“When you pay an insurance premium, you are paying a price associated with drug addiction,” he said. “When you pay car insurance, you’re paying a price associated with drunk driving. When your property taxes go up, you are contributing to a machine that is ineffectively treating substance disorders.”

After Rutherford’s presentation, attendees stepped up to share their own stories of recovery and discuss the obstacles they faced on the road.

“One barrier I faced was access to support. We need access to support,” said Darren Reed, who spoke about the difficulty in finding programs for people who don’t do well in traditional 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. “We need to help people in early recovery stay in early recovery until they’re ready to move on.”

Other speakers spoke about how family dynamics or other mental illnesses exacerbated their struggles with substance abuse, and the need for programs that take these factors into account. And as the panelists admitted, many of those programs don’t exist yet in southeastern Minnesota.

“We’re behind the curve a little bit,” said Steele County Attorney Dan McIntosh, who was one of the panelists.

Still, there were stories of hope and progress to share.

“Recovery has given me back the respect of my kids,” said Ric Staloch, who said he has been in recovery now for 25 years. “I never lost their love, but I did lose their respect.”

And there’s progress happening in the options people in recovery have to support them, as well. July will mark the one-year anniversary of the Steele-Waseca Drug Court, which Judge Joseph Bueltel called “the best time of the week” because of the success stories he sees playing out. Also new in the last year is Smart Recovery, a program organized by Reed to offer an alternative to 12-step programs. And more are on the way. Rutherford said the next steps now that the community assessment is wrapping up include offering telephone recovery support in local communities.

“Someone getting out of a treatment center, someone beginning a relationship with adult probation, or someone just picking up one of our fliers, that person would call us and say I’d like to have telephone recovery support, and then a person in recovery will call them and talk about their recovery goals,” he said.

That touches on another key point of the forum: recovery must start with and be supported by people who have undergone their own struggles with substance abuse disorders.

“That’s the guiding principle, that it has to come from the recovery community, not coming from anywhere else,” Rutherford said. “It’s not up to the state to provide this whole plethora of services.”

And to do that, the recovery community must first share their stories and needs, as many did Thursday night.

“Our communities have people that are dying in them because of stigma and because of lack of awareness of the resources that are available,” Rutherford said. “… The first thing we ask people to do is talk about it. Please, if you’re in recovery, talk about it.”