A recovery program just for cops
Law enforcement officers, among
all first responders, can get more help
and more support to overcome substance abuse problems if they can
find a support group that doesn’t set
them among the general public dealing with these challenges. To offer a
DR.
place for cops to get the help they
JIM
MICHAEL
need, Princeton House Behavioral
SCHNEIDER
BIZZARRO
Health has started a second location
for weekly Bottles and Badges meetings where they can partake of a 12-step recovery program.
Officers who go outside to meetings that include the general public are understandably reluctant to actually share those critical
thoughts that are on their mind, the experiences that have led them
to self-medicate and to drug and alcohol abuse. Outside of police
headquarters, people who hear cops talking about their addictions
might be thinking, “A guy who arrested me for DWI is sitting here in
the same room with me trying to get sober” or the meetings could
include citizens that they might encounter in work, and such a
threat is enough to keep them from getting the help they need.
People that understand the addiction, the powerlessness of it and
how everyday police work and the law enforcement culture can lead
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JUNE 2015
to it, need a safe place to share, relate and, ultimately, recover. For
first responders, there are a lot of needs that are profession-specific.
Based on the success Princeton House has had with its Bottles
and Badges meeting at its facility in Princeton that has been going
on for more than 18 months, a second meeting has been started at
the Princeton House Hamilton site in Mercer County this month.
The Hamilton site Bottles and Badges meeting is scheduled for
Mondays at 7 p.m.
What we at Princeton House are doing in the two locations is
extending to all first responders - not just law enforcement officers
or firefighters but military, dispatchers, EMTs and EMS - a place to
go to talk about the day-to-day struggles they deal with. It’s no secret
that not handling stress in a healthy and pro-active way can lead to
self-medicating which can then lead to substance abuse and addiction.
Now, we all know that there’s a lot of stress in all aspects of law
enforcement. Corrections officers have a disproportionate amount
of stress because of the environment they work in. But we all also
know how having a few drinks starts out as no big deal for so many
cops. It’s a rite of passage. It comes with the territory. Back in the day,
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