PLATTSBURGH — Mike Carpenter’s goal is to close the MHAB Life Skills Campus.
“I will be successful when this place is closed,” Carpenter, president and co-founder of MHAB, said speaking to a crowd of people at the fourth annual Overdose Awareness Event Thursday.
“When there’s never a need for this place, I will be successful. I will pat myself on the back and say I did a hell of a job in helping society eradicate us of this terrible illness.”
BIG DAY
The event, coinciding with International Overdose Awareness Day, was hosted by both MHAB and neighboring partner Champlain Valley Family Center.
The two organizations work seamlessly together in offering opportunities to those battling addiction. MHAB, which opened just a few years ago, provides transitional housing for individuals in recovery and CVFC provides substance abuse treatment, prevention, education and related support programs.
“One of the big issues that we battled is stigma and that stigma goes both ways,” Carpenter said.
“And what we tried to do here was put a facility where people who are afflicted with this illness and other illnesses would have the ability to interact with people who are not, and try to realize that we’re all in this world together and we’re all trying to do the same thing. We’re all trying to live as good as we can one day at a time.”
Betsy Vicencio, vice-president and co-founder of MHAB, said when that stigma is reduced, people don’t feel the need to hide their traumas behind drugs.
“We can just make it OK to talk about the bad things, so that we’re not ashamed. and there’s healing in that in being able to say it out loud.”
Throughout Thursday’s event, residents and community members were treated to a barbecue and Narcan training and heard from several speakers to close out the day.
Carpenter said holding these events regularly helps build morale in the building and rallies everybody to be more engaged in what they’re ultimately trying to do: fight addiction.
“It’s such a debilitating illness,” he said.
“There’s so many people who don’t get a first, second, third or even 10th time and they have to keep coming back. It becomes so frustrating for the family and the friends. It really makes it difficult. So things like this kind of rally support for everybody. People see that they’re not alone — they’re not battling this alone.”
SUCCESS STORIES
Denis King, director of peer engagement & recovery services at CVFC and recovering alcoholic and addict, was pivotal in putting the event together.
He said this year, it was important to highlight the success stories rather than the people they have lost.
To do so, King asked Andrew Garren, who has been sober for a year now, to speak to the crowd about his struggles with drug addiction and how difficult it was — and continues to be — to overcome that.
“I was introduced to substances pretty early. I was a pretty headstrong kid, labeled ADHD, got myself in trouble, you know, a lot of the time, I was really just fishing for attention from people you know, so I fell in the wrong crowds a lot,” he said.
“I wanted to be cool. I wanted to do this. and I’m an all or nothing type of person. So I always took things to the extremes. As I got older, it just started getting worse. You know, things got out of control for me.”
Garren shared that he hit his lowest point when he overdosed and had his children taken away.
“I got lucky, however … the court system and, you know, counselors that I had, they seen something in me that I didn’t see. and you know, they pushed me into getting help,” he said.
“…I just want to tell everybody like, if I can get through all that, anybody can get through it. I mean, anybody could stand here and do the same thing.”
Garren told the Press-Republican afterward that he was comfortable with the public hearing his story in the event it may help someone else.
PERSONAL
For Town of Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman, also a speaker at the event, this ongoing fight against addiction is personal.
“I lost an uncle to overdose,” he said.
“I talked with my grandmother a number of times about what MHAB represents, and a really powerful statement that she made is, ‘I’m confident that if your uncle lived in a community that had an MHAB, he would still be alive today.
“I think that says a lot, right? Because it’s not about a handout, it’s about a hand up.”
Assemblyman Billy Jones (D-Chateauguay Lake) similarly praised the facility’s efforts and said it needs to be replicated more throughout the community.
“It’s people like Mike Carpenter. It’s people like Betsy, it’s people like Denis. It’s people that get things done in this town that are making a difference,” Jones said.
“We have to depend on each other in this community, and I know the reason that he (Mike) built this facility is because he was sick of seeing people that he knew, going to their funerals, and he was just damn sick of it. and I think the important lesson today is keep an eye on each other. We have to look out for each other. and with this facility, we continue to do that.”