When one door closes, another opens

> Last Door youth addiction surpasses 20 years helping locals

Aaron Guillen
Staff Reporter

 

A Ithough many people may
ssociate drug addiction with

communities such as Vancouver’s
Downtown Eastside, those that
struggle daily with drug abuse
can also be found much closer to
home.

New Westminster’s Last
Door Recovery Society, a non-
profit charity, has been working
since 1984 to break the ongoing
addictions everyday people
face—whether they are addictions
to smoking, gambling, alcohol,
drugs, or perhaps Internet and
video games. According to their
website, the recovery centre
is “respected in the Drug and
Alcohol addiction Field, and
received the ASAP (Association
of Substance Abuse Programs
of BC) Award of Excellence in
Addictions.” Since 1996, the centre
has included a youth program
to save the young lives from
becoming a statistic.

Peter Beka, Addiction
Counsellor Youth Program
Coordinator, has experienced
exactly that during his early years.
In a phone interview with CBC,

DCBA, Douglas College, FortisBC

Beka shared how his passion for
helping others brought him back
to the centre, years after he got
clean thanks to Last Door.

Upon discovering that the
Downtown Eastside wasn’t the
only place for those struggling
with addiction, Beka and his
team realized that they needed to

broaden their options. Recently,
Last Door began family programs,
in which an individual with an
addiction can work towards
recovery alongside the love and
affection provided not only by

the employees, but their family
members. Beka noted the benefits
he’s seen in those who make the

  

Image via www. lastdoor.org

issue a family matter. Additionally,
he talked about how the little
things truly add up to bring about
a success story.

“Feeling better is not how
youre gonna get off drugs,” said
Beka in the CBC interview. “To
feel better and to be happy takes a

collaborate for on-campus dialogue

> Two topics on agenda: solutions, and the future

Jamal Al-Bayaa
Staff Writer

 

hrough the joint efforts

of the DCBA, Douglas
College, and a commitment
of $15,000 from their partner
FortisBC, serious conversations
about climate change and
energy usage were able to take

place at Douglas on April 1.
Since it was primarily
FortisBC’s event, their team
addressed eight topics that they
deemed important or good for
discussion, and students were
given a month to personalize
them, internalize them, and
then facilitate conversations
around them ina variety of ways.
The topics were conservation,
innovation, education,
empowerment, demand-side-
management, climate change,
and efficiencies. These topics
inspired talks on forestry,
overfishing, animal agriculture,
consumer behaviour, and more.
An underlying theme
connected all these
conversations, and it was
presented in the form of a
question: “How can we make
sustainable living easier?”

Student leaders let the
community answer that one.
It was their job to facilitate,
encourage, and record the
discussions, not enter into the
decision and brainstorming
process for them—although
brainstorming with them
was always encouraged.

Siobhan Ashe’s “Sociology of
Environment” class led a series
of dialogues, which took place
in Douglas College’s fishbowl.

As Judy Darcy MLA for
New-West said: “There’s a lot of

places that you could be on this
beautiful sunny day... and you're
here talking about action... |
think it’s so exciting.”

In the weeks leading up to
the dialogue, students were
reminded that climate change
is not a drastically negative
concept that requires grim
discussions of death and doom.
They were encouraged to
keep the conversation equally
positive, and encouraged to
view solutions as the key to
good dialogue, not problems.

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In attendance was Liberal MP
Dan Ruimy, who insisted: “’m not
a politician, although they tell me
lam.” Ruimy shared a bit about
what being a first-time politician
is like, and he discussed what
it’s like not being a millennial,
while the world is going
through this cultural shift and
transitioning into a more holistic
and conscious community.

Ruimy expressed to the
dialogue tables that there wasn’t
any emphasis on recycling when
he and his generation were

spiritual awakening—something
as simple as having a good night’s
sleep, somebody who cares,
something to eat, and not being
afraid of living in anxiety or
paranoia.”

With a total of 100 beds,
the majority of treatment plans
are gender specific to males,
young and old. Thanks to the
Family Living programs, both
genders of all ages are welcome.
With a nurturing volunteer who
understands what you've been
through beside you on your
journey to recovery, it seems like
success is truly not too far around
the corner.

“You get time to develop the
skills to stay clean rather than
be clean then shake their hand
and say ‘good luck,” noted David
Pavlus, Executive Director, ina
YouTube clip.

“We really want you to be
good at it by the time youre
leaving, if that’s having a
relationship, having a career, or
going back to school, we can set
a time frame and work towards
mending those situations. If it’s
someone off the street, you have
to help them reinvent their life.
But at the end of day, it’s worth it.”

growing up, “[and asa result], I
throw everything away. My staff
actually started teaching me—the
younger people started teaching
me, how do we stop that, how do
we eliminate that? I was surprised
to see our garbage levels go down
to almost nothing. [Now] almost
everything is being recycled.”
Those who participated
showed impressive conviction
with which they worked on their
dialogues, but also with the
research posters that were on
display outside, and the quality
of the questions that they asked
in the panel discussion featuring
a number of Vancouver’s energy
and climate change experts.
Hazel Postma, Associate
Vice-President of Douglas
College, said that the purpose of
the event was to fulfill Douglas
College’s strategic goal of
providing “experiential learning”
for students, Jennifer Henderson,
Postma, and all the staff involved
expressed their satisfaction with
the dialogue, which provided not
only experiential learning, but
also networking opportunities
and some insightful
conversations for the students.