A Door To Everything Society

Seek Help, Receive Love, Heal Within

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John Volken Academy:
Therapeutic Community
for Drug and Alcohol Addiction

In 2014, John Volken, founder of the John Volken Academy was awarded the Dalai Lama Humanitarian Award in recognition of his outstanding work creating three therapeutic communities for drug and alcohol addiction recovery.

He has constructed academies in Surrey, BC, Canada, in Seattle, Washington, and Phoenix, Arizona with his own wealth.

Each academy has conjoined work environments for the participants to have on-the-job training.

Recently, A Door To Everything Society had the honour of touring the John Volken Academy in Surrey, BC, as well as the 60,000-square-foot work environment for the students, Price Pro, a retail outlet selling groceries, household goods, and furniture.

We were really impressed with the incredible dedication and care that has gone into this academy for ones who are struggling with issues of addiction.

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The Compassion Road:
Depression, Suicide and Hope

Lately and not so lately, well-known people who we call celebrities, are committing suicide. . .

As one who has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts for much of my life, and fear of talking about it, I’m finally coming to see that speaking up could lighten the load.

My heavy load, when I’m in the throes of an ‘episode,’ is I want to end my life, I want to give up. Everything appears futile.

I spiral into a place of despair, hopelessness — repeated unloving mind statements about my self — patterns that feel very hard to overcome.

I’m far far far away from my heart and the peace, Love, joy that is present there. I can’t stop reliving past trauma with fear of the future. I dissociate from my joyful everyday self.

My thought patterns are of sorrow, hatred, limitation, fear, control, that huge sense of futility.

Usually I hide this behaviour, somehow get through it, and don’t talk about it because of the shame I feel.

Lately, though, I’ve spoken a little more, slowly coming out of my cave of darkness, with a great deal of Divine Help.

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How to Talk to Our Kids About Fentanyl

It’s important to talk to kids about drugs and alcohol when they’re young. A University of Alberta expert recommends starting to talk about the subject with kids as young as seven years old.

Start with these three messages. Then focus on the delivery.

By Lesley Young, March 29th, 2018

https://www.folio.ca/how-to-talk-to-your-kids-about-fentanyl

There’s no magic pill for talking to your kids about drugs—a conversation that is more important than ever given all kinds of street drugs are being laced with fentanyl, a new deadly entry to the market.

“Sometimes parents don’t talk to their kids about drugs because they believe they’ve taught them to make good choices. For other parents, there’s ignorance about the risk, especially when it comes to fentanyl,” said Troy Janzen, an educational psychologist at UAlberta. “They don’t know the opioid is everywhere, and that the amount of two grains of sand can kill you.”

Of the 343 people who died from fentanyl overdoses in Alberta in 2016, roughly 10 per cent were under the age of 19. The overall number of overdose deaths in all categories is likely higher but currently unknown due to data backlogs, said Elaine Hyshka, an assistant professor and addiction specialist with UAlberta’s School of Public Health.

She said talking to your kids about drug use, and establishing strong bonds with them, are an important determinant in whether the children will ultimately engage in risky behaviours like drug use.

With that in mind, here are three things to focus on while talking to your kids.

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A Poem by Janine:
I Wrote This for YOU

I wrote this for YOU

By my SElf

What if……

I am living heaven on earth right now

What if……

My heart was exploding with love for All that IS

Right now

What if……I knew what I felt to be true

What if……

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Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s
Opiate Epidemic

http://www.samquinones.com/books/dreamland/

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital centre of the community.

Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America — addiction like no other the country has ever faced.

How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic.

Acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones weaves together two riveting tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been a catastrophic opiate epidemic.

The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma’s campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive — extremely addictive — miracle painkiller.

Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin — cheap, potent, and originating from one small county, Xalisco, Nayarit, on Mexico’s west coast and independent of any drug cartel — assaulted small town and mid-sized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system.

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