The Laker/Lutz News

Recovery Epicenter Foundation

Symposium seeks addiction recovery solutions

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A symposium is scheduled for later this month that will seek to create a blueprint for improving long-term substance abuse recovery efforts in Pasco County.

The Recover Out Loud Pasco Symposium is set for Sept. 28 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Calvary Chapel Worship Center, 6825 Trouble Creek Road in New Port Richey.

Admission is free.

The symposium is being organized by Recovery Epicenter Foundation, a newly licensed and accredited recovery community organization operating out of Trinity.

The symposium will seek to engage individuals, stakeholders and community leaders in an effort “to grow community-oriented initiatives, cultivate community allies, and develop recovery peer-based programs,” according to the event’s flyer.

Its keynote speaker is Dona Dmitrovic, executive director of Las Vegas-based Foundation for Recovery and former National Director of Consumer Affairs for Substance Use Disorders at Optum, United Health Group.

Other noted speakers include:

  • Tina Levene, motivational speaker and published author on abuse and addictions
  • Pasco Sheriff’s Office Lt. Toni Roach, who heads the agency’s Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and Mental Health and Threat Assessment (MHAT) teams
  • Sara Mollo, Sixth Judicial Circuit chief assistant public defender
  • Former Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Judge Lynn Tepper
  • Sarah Cobelli, Baycare Behavioral Health program manager
  • Ginny LaRue, Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Foundation recovery project director

Additionally, the symposium will feature interactive café conversations about which recovery-related services are working in the community and what needs more support, along with a series of panel discussions from people in recovery and existing recovery community organizations throughout Florida.

Thoughts and input gathered from the symposium will be incorporated into the Recovery Epicenter Foundation’s visioning process in November to better define action steps for recovery-based programming, said Recovery Epicenter Foundation RCO director Rachel Starostin.

“The whole thing is we want to get the community together,” said Starostin, who expects anywhere from 200 to 300 attendees at the symposium. “The community benefits when we all collaborate together.”

Trinity-based Recovery Epicenter Foundation is hosting a symposium to help find ways to improve long-term substance abuse recovery efforts in Pasco County. The Recover Out Loud Pasco Symposium is set for Sept. 28. (Courtesy of Recovery Epicenter Foundation)

Starostin said the Recovery Epicenter Foundation’s “ultimate goal” is to build a peer-run, recovery-oriented community center to facilitate programs in the way of employment assistance, transportation, health and wellness, recreational opportunities, independent support groups and so on.

“We’re like building a shell out of something that needs to exist. We’re building something out of nothing,” she said.

“It’s kind of an abstract concept, when you don’t have a building and trying to plan out the future,” she said.

Starostin emphasized the need for such a recovery facility to help people “rebuild their lives” once they get out of addiction treatment. That assistance may initially include assisting them with “locatable, tangible resources,” such as basic medical care, living shelters, food stamps and more.

Starostin put it like this: “As a general rule, until you meet somebody’s basic needs, they’re not really receptive to listen. Like, how well do you focus when you’re hungry and you haven’t eaten in two days?”

Meanwhile, Starostin said the upstart recovery community organization is looking to mobilize more peer specialists to help with implementing various recovery programs. Peer specialists, or peer coaches, are people who have been successful in the recovery process who help others battling addiction through shared experience, understanding, respect and mutual empowerment.

Said Starostin, “There’s something magical when one peer who’s suffered from substance use works with another. You identify with them, you trust them, and it’s not like a 12-step program, you help somebody kind of come up with their own plan.”

Recovery Epicenter Foundation’s recovery community organization operates as an independent, nonprofit entity — led and governed by representatives of local communities of recovery.

Its mission is to support recovery through advocacy, education and peer-to-peer support services, to improve outcomes for persons seeking drugs and alcohol addictions.

Guidance and technical assistance on the Recovery Epicenter Foundation recovery community organization’s development process is coming from the Florida Recovery Project/Faces & Voices of Recovery, with collaboration from Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Foundation, Florida Department of Children and Families, and Peer Support Coalition of Florida.

An initial community listening session for the recovery community organization was held in February at the Land O’ Lakes Community Center, followed by a symposium planning session.

The sessions have already brought together dozens of stakeholders, including persons in recovery and professionals in health care, criminal justice, faith-based organizations and others.

“When we started this process, there wasn’t a whole lot of momentum behind it, but we’re getting it; people are getting involved and they’re starting to understand,” Starostin said.

To register for the symposium, visit tinyurl.com/yygu9e3s.

For information, contact Rachel Starostin at or (727) 255-2036.

Published September 11, 2019

Addiction recovery community organization forming in Pasco

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New long-term addiction recovery services may soon be headed to Pasco County, by way of what’s called a Recovery Community Organization.

A Recovery Community Organization, otherwise known as an RCO, is an independent, nonprofit organization led and governed by representatives of local communities of recovery, which organizes recovery-focused policy advocacy activities, carries out recovery-focused community education and outreach programs, and provides peer-based recovery support services.

Dozens of community members participated in a Feb 26 listening session in Land O’ Lakes on the possible formation of a Recovery Community Organization, to help bring more long-term addiction recovery services coming to Pasco. A Recovery Community Organization is an independent nonprofit, which promotes recovery-focused policy advocacy activities, carries out recovery-focused community education and outreach programs, and provides peer-based recovery support services. (Kevin Weiss)

The project is being facilitated by Clearwater-based Recovery Epicenter Foundation, which has operated an RCO without borders since 2016.

Guidance and technical assistance on the program is coming from the Florida Alcohol & Drug Abuse Foundation (FADAA), through a three-year Aetna Foundation grant called All in for Florida: A Recovery Project; the Pasco County Alliance for Substance Abuse (ASAP) is also providing support in the RCO development process.

Details about RCO programming were discussed during a Feb. 26 community listening session at Land O’ Lakes Heritage Park in Land O’ Lakes.

While there’s no definitive timetable for the formation of an RCO in Pasco, it’s expected to take many months at least, officials said.

The community listening session brought together dozens of stakeholders, including persons in recovery and professionals in health care, criminal justice, faith-based organizations and others.

Attendees suggested an RCO in Pasco needs to, among other initiatives, find ways address the following:

  • More affordable housing opportunities
  • More homeless shelters and treatment facilities
  • More residential treatment beds
  • Better public transportation opportunities
  • Recovery-friendly employment and workforce training
  • Greater access to recovery at all levels of care
  • Decriminalization of substance use disorder
  • Additional 12-step recovery meetings
  • Greater access to peer support services

In many cases, RCOs shift the focus of recovery programming from clinically driven acute care to recovery management, speakers said.

A significant component of that is mobilizing recovery peer specialists — people who have been successful in the recovery process who help others battling addiction through shared experience, understanding, respect and mutual empowerment.

Such methodology helps reduce relapse rates over time, according to Ken Brown, a recovery-oriented system of care specialist for the Florida Department of Children and Families Suncoast Region, who spoke at the community listening session.

Brown said RCOs and related support services provide “a key element for communities to help people in recovery.”

He emphasized the need for more placement on long-term recovery management, as opposed to routine substance abuse treatment.

Brown put it like this: “So many times, our system falls short because we address the acute care needs that go into treatment for 30 days or whatever and then they get out — and that’s not how (recovery) happens.

“We have to shift our thought process from acute care to recovery management, ‘What are the hopes and dreams of those going through recovery? What can we do to advance their recovery? And, most importantly, what can we do to keep you in recovery?’”

The listening session also featured FADAA recovery project director Ginny LaRue, who is developing RCOs in nine Florida counties, including Pasco.

In other counties, LaRue explained, RCOs have primarily focused facilitating programs that offer employment assistance, transportation, health and wellness, and recreational opportunities, independent support groups and so on.

While FADAA assists in forming RCOs, LaRue said the onus is on the local community “to make it sustainable, through partnerships (and) through collaboration.”

She added RCOs are successful because they’re grassroots, community-driven efforts that get “more of the voice of recovery.”

LaRue added: “This is not clinical. This is lived experience helping lived experience. It’s a matter of all these people in the community saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to do it.’”

LaRue herself is a former addict who’s been in recovery for the last 15 years.

In addition to her work with FADAA, she also operates a sober-living house in Daytona Beach.

She, like others at the meeting, underscored the importance of wide-ranging, accessible long-term recovery services.

For her, “things didn’t get better” immediately stepping out of drug treatment, LaRue said.

Instead, she said she needed years of peer mentoring and recovery support services to become “a responsible member of my community.”

“You cannot live on an island and try to recover,” LaRue said. “I needed the community to wrap their arms around me and help me through that process, and restore me.”

The next step in the RCO formation process is scheduling a recovery symposium.

That will be followed by a series of recovery community visioning meetings to determine action steps and program implementation.

A symposium planning session is scheduled for March 20 at 11 a.m., at Trinity Church of Christ, 4234 St. Lawrence Drive in New Port Richey.

The meeting is open to the public.

Published March 13, 2019

Town hall sheds light on opioid overdose prevention

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Cesar Rodriguez spent 17 years of his life as a heroin addict.

He overdosed on five separate occasions, only to be saved by first responders who administered him naloxone, or Narcan, an emergency treatment that counteracts the life-threatening effects of opioid overdose.

“If I didn’t have Narcan,” he said, “I wouldn’t be able to sit here and share my experience. I would’ve never had a shot to recover.”

Pasco County Sheriff’s Cpl. Sherry Johnson Tandy demonstrates how to use the Narcan nasal spray to counteract the life-threatening effects of opioid overdose. She said her agency has deployed the medication 60 times, each of which has been successful in preventing an overdose-related death. (Kevin Weiss)

Parent Lisa Conca also has observed the Narcan’s life-saving effects when her son overdosed on heroin.

“I had never even heard of Narcan until that day he overdosed and was taken to the hospital,” Conca said. “Narcan saves lives and gives our kids another chance to help them on the road to recovery.”

These comments came up during a community discussion on opioid overdose prevention on March 8 at North Tampa Behavioral Health, which is located in Wesley Chapel. The event was organized by the Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention.

The panel discussion was part of a community-wide effort to provide education about opioid overdose and what individuals can do to save the lives of those suffering with the chronic illness of addiction.

Much of the panel addressed how to access and administer Narcan.

Narcan is the first and only FDA-approved nasal form of naloxone for the emergency treatment of a known or suspected opioid overdose. The medication helps blocks the effects of opioids on the brain and restores breathing.

Opioids include heroin and prescription pain pills like morphine, codeine, oxycodone, methadone and Vicodin.

“Often the reason (over-dosers) end up passing is because the brain does not have oxygen. This medication helps alleviate that,” said Szilvia Boos Salmon, a pharmacist with Tampa Poison Control.

Along with the nasal spray, naloxone is available in an injectable form.

The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office is one of a number of growing law enforcement agencies to carry naloxone for possible overdose calls.

Pasco Sheriff Cpl. Sherry Johnson-Tandy said the agency has had over 60 deployments of Narcan. Each deployment was successful in preventing an overdose-related death, she said.

In addition to reversing overdoses, the medication is also for deputies and first responders who may become exposed or have incidental contact to illicit fentanyl or heroin at a particular crime scene.

Johnson-Tandy demonstrated how to safely and effectively administer both the nasal spray and injectable forms of naloxone. Free samples of Narcan were later distributed to the audience.

Johnson-Tandy said it’s onset time is anywhere between 1 minute to 3 minutes.

“It works almost just like an EpiPen,” she said.

Narcan is the first and only FDA-approved nasal form of naloxone for the emergency treatment of a known or suspected opioid overdose. The medication helps blocks the effects of opioids on the brain and restores breathing. Opioids include heroin and prescription pain pills like morphine, codeine, oxycodone, methadone and Vicodin. (Courtesy of Amphastar Pharmaceuticals)

“The best thing about this is, if you give it to someone and they don’t need it, it can’t hurt them,” she said, adding if someone overdosed on cocaine or stopped breathing for another reason, it won’t have adverse effects.

The Narcan medication might be needed more than ever.

Opioid overdoses increased by roughly 30 percent across the U.S., in just 14 months between 2016 and 2017, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC called the data a “wake up call to the fast-moving opioid overdose epidemic.” It recorded 142,000 overdoses in hospital emergency departments across the nation, between July 2016 and September 2017.

Although not all overdoses in the study were fatal, they are part of the unsettling toll of opioids. Nationwide in 2016, illicit and prescription drug overdoses killed 64,000 people.

The problem is growing locally, too, experts say.

Pasco County had the highest rate of hospitalization in the Suncoast Region for opioid overdoses, according to 2016 data from the Agency for Healthcare Administration.

Additionally, Pasco has tied for fifth highest out of the state’s 67 counties for drug overdose mortality rates over the last few years, according to county health rankings.

There were 165 overdoses in Pasco in 2017— matching numbers from the 2010 and 2011 prescription pill crisis, said Capt. Mike Jenkins, who oversees the narcotics unit for the special investigations division at the Pasco Sheriff’s Office.

There’s also been a gradual rise in fentanyl and heroin use in the county over the past year, he said.

Other topics covered during the session included how to prevent opioid addiction and avenues for long-term treatment of people who are dependent on opioids.

Speakers agreed it starts with education and advocacy.

“We can’t arrest our way out of this issue,” Jenkins said. “It takes comprehensive, strategic partnerships to really move forward.”

“Start in the schools early, and educate kids as to how dangerous mom and dad’s pill bottles are,” said New Port Richey-based attorney James Magazine.

Communities must find ways to effectively integrate recovering addicts back into society after they receive treatment, Magazine said.

Rochelle Zwicharowski, a support specialist with the St. Petersburg-based Recovery Epicenter Foundation, said those who have been rehabilitated need to share their experiences.

“There’s 23 million people in recovery, and how many people do you know? We’re too quiet about it. If you’re in recovery, don’t be afraid to speak out about it because we do have to smash that stigma,” she said.

Revised April 3, 2018