Addiction Recovery is all around us, freely shared and supported! We are now celebrating one another’s recovery just as we have always celebrated positive change in other kinds of physical, spiritual and emotional well-being. So…how do we support loved ones who are living addiction-free? 

JCFS Chicago addiction services, in partnership with Live4Lali, is encouraging Jewish communal organizations to hold Overdose Prevention and Reversal (Narcan) Training for staff and community members.  We all have the responsibility to know how to save a life and with Narcan, it couldn’t be easier. 

The Jewish community has come a long way in acknowledging addiction as a significant issue and in supporting community members struggling with addiction and those in recovery. JCFS Chicago and the Chicago Board of Rabbis invite you to continue this forward momentum.  

Overdose deaths have reached unprecedented levels in recent years, particularly due to the increased stress, isolation, and barriers to addiction treatment brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news: we can learn to recognize symptoms of opioid overdose and administer the rescue drug Narcan (brand name for Naloxone), which can reverse opioid overdose symptoms within minutes.

Most of us would agree that gratitude is indisputably good. It is therefore reasonable to ask: if gratitude is so obviously good and valuable, what are the barriers to gratitude?

In 1989, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) established National Recovery Month as a national observance to promote and support new evidence-based substance use treatment and recovery practices.

Addiction wears many masks. It can look like physical, psychological and spiritual dependence on substances or the use of devices. 

What is compassion meditation, and how can it be so impactful so quickly? In this form of meditation, one offers simple phrases of good will to oneself and to others. Even short periods of compassion meditation has been found to reduce stress and increase positive emotions.

Addiction and addiction recovery are realities in our community; they always have been and likely will be into the near future.  Until recently many people in the Jewish community denied that addiction was a Jewish issue.  Now there is a much greater recognition of how addiction challenges our own.  However, many Jewish families still express deep feelings of isolation when confronting addiction in themselves or their loved ones.

There are so many ways, large and small, that each of us can support Jewish families struggling with active addiction or in recovery, to bring them out of isolation and into the loving support our community offers.  Here are some ideas:

by Yakov Danishefsky, JCFS Chicago Community Services Intern

Leadership, at its best, is fueled by a fervent desire for change and the ardent commitment to a dream. But zealotry, whatever its worth, is not leadership. Leadership consultant, Marty Linsky, writes that “Leadership is disappointing your people at a rate they can absorb.” If the leader expresses too much passion, she loses her people. Too little passion, and she loses herself and her cause. Being passionate enough to dedicate your life to social-change advocacy, and yet patient and even-keeled enough to do so successfully, is not simple.