'Recovery is for Everyone' event coming Saturday

Gus Pearcy, The Lebanon Reporter, Ind.
·2 min read

Sep. 16—September is National Recovery Month and to celebrate, InWell, along with Boone County Family Recovery Court, is hosting a recovery event at noon Saturday at Lebanon's Memorial Park.

"It's more of an awareness and family day," Macy Simmons, the director of recovery support groups for InWell, said. "Recovery touches everybody, whether you're a child, a parent, friend, co-worker, or those types of things, somebody who has been touched with substance abuse disorder."

The celebration will include a live band, food trucks, resource booths, Narcan and Narcan training, HIV and Hep C screenings, bounce houses, and more. The first 75 people to show up get a free T-shirt.

Simmons said the event will show that there is a community of support for those recovering from substance abuse or mental illness.

"We just want the community to come together to spread awareness and support people who are in recovery or have loved ones in recovery," Simmons said.

The event will wrap up around 3 p.m., Simmons predicted.

Boone County has a growing recovery community. Circuit Court Judge Lori Schein has started Family Recovery Court, a specialty court, and hopes to get a Drug Recovery Court operating by January.

Family Recovery Court Administrator Lauri Thompson said the intense recovery court designed to reunite families just graduated its third participant since January of 2020. Currently there are seven participants who meet weekly with Magistrate Sally Berish.

"The primary criteria is they have to have (Department of Child Services) involvement," Thompson said. "And that DCS involvement has to include substance use."

The program that has a goal of keeping a family together has three phases to graduate.

"The overall goal is to help them achieve recovery and maintain it so that their family can be intact," she said. "So that they don't come back into the DCS system. We want to break that cycle of substance use."