As I sat down for the opening plenary of the Cape Cod Symposium On Addictive Disorders (CCSAD) with a handful of other Brits involved in addiction treatment, I found myself next to Mark; who, on being told about my Winston Churchill Fellowship, observed: “I’m not too old to learn, I’m just too old to be taught.” It felt like another apt Churhillianism.
Among my compatriots were Dave Mulvaney who now heads up the Tower Hamlets alcohol team as well as being a board member of RAPT (Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust), his RAPT colleague Caroline Cole, and Deidre Boyd, the editor of Addiction Today. Her immediate response to hearing of my Fellowship was to commission an article from me for the magazine. There wasn't time or opportunity to explain that such an article would not be possible for several weeks.
The plenary subject was on how to get treatment to the estimated 20 million Americans who need it. Out of a population of 307 million men women and children that works out at 6.5% needing addiction treatment. At the same rate, the UK would have to try to find treatment for 3,900,000 people! A figure that is wildly over the top of the most pessimistic statistics for the UK. But I've heard it said that where the US goes, the UK follows. Was it Tony Blair who said that?
CCSAD has attracted several non Americans this year-British, Irish, Canadian, Mexican, Caribbean – but it is overwhelmingly a regional and national affair. The 800 delegates are serious and committed in their efforts to coordinate and exchange knowledge and experience on the best ways of tackling this illness that kills so many, and leaves so many more devastated.
They are doing it in the fine Hyannis Conference Centre, with swimming pool and 18-hole golf course attached, and they are jollied along with exhortations to buy raffle tickets for this (GA members excepted, I suppose), sponsor that, and wash it all down with coffee and alarming quantities of icing-covered cake that not only resembles large blocks of cocaine but appears to have a similar social function.
The 100 exhibitors representing detoxes, rehabs, hospitals and institutions are a tiny minority of those engaged in bringing recovery to addicts in the USA; but in my current understanding, there is no one here like Kairos Community Trust that is managing to incorporate so many strands and facets of recovery within a single organisation. There's certainly no one doing it on the same budget!
It is a privilege to be here and to learn and exchange information, and I particularly enjoy the response I get when I explain how the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust is prepared to back and support ideas such as this. Another two days of seminars, meetings and plenaries will be taxing on my brain though, and then I have a day's driving across the state to Amsterdam, New York, which will give me time to process some of what I am accumulating here. And I'll be happy to get away from the cakes.
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