We are blessed to be living in one of the most beautiful and vibrant communities in Canada.

WE are surrounded in the natural beauty of the Blue Mountains, the magnificence of Georgian Bay, and by the abundance of our crops and farms.

Every year our town is visited by tens of thousands of visitors who for at least a minute of two want to share our vistas of beauty.

But when in the future, we look back at this era of our history, we may well be judged, not by the beauty of our community, not by how efficiently we ran city hall, or how well our businesses and farms have done, but instead, we may well be judged by the question:  ‘what did you do to try to stop the plague?’.

As civic leaders, as business people, as caregivers and as parents,  history may well view us through the lens of ‘what did we do to battle the opioid plague?’

As civic leaders we must face this plague with our eyes ‘wide open’.  In our beautiful town of Blue Mountain, we cannot allow ourselves to be be blinded by the successes of our businesses and the beauty of our community.  Every day, we are also confronted with the hidden reality few of us want to discuss or admit exists and yet it is perhaps one of the most important discussions we as a community will ever face.

How do we protect our children and young people from becoming addicted and dying from opiods and other killer drugs?

The first thing we must do is to ‘face the reality’ that between 8 to 10 people will die from the plague today and these numbers will increase unless we develop a successful winning strategy to combat this plague.

To this point, governments are content to start throwing tens of millions of dollars at providing ‘safe injection sites’ for existing junkies….. dare I use that word?  It is yet to be determined if this is an effective strategy.  Governments are already providing funding for methadone and alcohol addiction treatment centres.   Do we just continually set up new addiction centres as new addictions emerge?  This will be a question we will face much sooner than any of us can anticipate at this point.

Not very long ago, we use to believe we were in ‘the war against drugs’….today we have accepted we have lost that war and now provide the drugs.

We need a new powerful, on-going and unending strategy which at least gives us the potential of successfully cutting down the rate of addictions of all types.  Is this goal just a ‘dream’….. no doubt it is….but what do we have to lose in developing new battle strategies.

Let the Battle Begin

WHAT DO WE KNOW?   Over decades of experience in the treatment of various addictions, we have learned there are basically two components to a successful overcoming addictions program, be it the addiction of smoking, alcohol, drug or food related addictions.

We know the ‘central components’ of successful addiction treatments are

1.  self-respect and self-worth which in turn is reinforced by
2.  helping others.

In short, the most successful treatments to addictions is:                                              ‘A Pride In Who We Are’ with the ‘extension’ of helping others attain their full potential.

If these beliefs are in fact the ‘centre’ of successful methods of addiction rehabilitation, perhaps it is time these thoughts, should also become the centre of our every day communications as a community.  The time has come to elevate the positive energies within our communities with the parallel result of elevating the self-respect and value of each of us as members of our communities.

If so, than how do we alter a community’s mindset?

Having mulled this question around for eons, a potential starting point hit me the other day when I was just finishing paying for an item at a retail store when in response to my ‘thank you’, the cashier responded by saying “no problem”.

The ‘no problem’ response has annoyed me since it became a general response the past five years or more.  Of course, my paying for my item ‘wasn’t a problem’, my coming into the store in the first place wasn’t a problem, my finding the item on my own wasn’t a problem; the store’s problems begin when thousands of customers like me ‘don’t’ come into the store…..as we see with the massive vacancy rates in thousands of malls.  The cashier isn’t solving a problem for me, as a customer, I am solving a problem for the store and helping the cashier keep her job.   I wanted to advise the cashier what an asinine response she gave me and that ‘you are welcome’ is a much more positive and respectful response to a ‘thank you’, but who has the time to correct every retail cashier we encounter?

Driving away it struck me; this cashier in fact affected my mindset.   My mindset was impacted by the cashier, in a negative way.   For a very brief time, the ‘no problem’ ridiculous comment, created a negative energy in my thinking.  Billions of dollars are spent every year by advertisers which attempt to create enough positive thoughts about their products in our minds, to create a positive enough energy to purchase what they sell.  Without that positive energy we would be indifferent to their products, which makes their advertising useless.

My family ends all telephone chats with “I love you!”: regardless of how contentious the conversation may actually have been.  It is a mindsets in our family, to let the other person know we love them and to tell them as often as possible with telephone conversations being the most obvious.   It is truly amazing how a single word, or two or three can significantly impact our energy levels.   Historically, a single word was the centre of ‘slavery’ to give you a blatant example between a single word and the negative energy impact that word still creates…. and I’ll bet you know what that word is without me saying it.

‘Perhaps to start to alter an entire community’s mindset, we just need to start with a single word… or two words…. or three words’, thought I.

If our goal is to establish a higher level of pride and self-confidence within the mindset of our community, particularly among our younger people, is the starting point to just start it as that as a stated goal?   I think that is the right starting point.

Imagine, if the thought ‘BE PROUD’ replaced terms such as ‘have a nice day’ and ‘no problem’ as a way of ending a communications interchange at the retail stores, in the churches, in the schools, in the playgrounds, and in our homes.  I tried this messaging out on my grandchildren, whose immediate response was ‘I am’.  And isn’t that what we want?   I followed up by asking them what they were proud about, and their positive energy levels went higher with every excited word they used to describe the things they were doing of which they were proud.

We want our young people to be proud of who they are.  We want them to be proud of themselves to the level where they instinctively recognize that knowingly doing something like taking an opioid or anything else which has a negative impact on their brains and bodies is a something they will reject because it is an self-attack against themselves, against their self-respect, and in the eyes of those they love and care for.   And just as importantly, if not ‘more so’ we want them to know, we are proud of them for who they are are and the positive decisions they are making.

Should we be establishing a ‘Be Proud’ movement?

Be Proud   ….   of helping others.

Be Proud   …. of not being a bully.

Be Proud ….  of living a healthy lifestyle

Be Proud…..  has an unlimited ways of being promoted.

Be Proud…..  of starting the conversation.

Be Proud ….  what a great poster phrase.

Be Proud ……. a twangy-slangy slogan to be sure.

Be Proud …  someone please write a song for it.

Be Proud!!!