Childhood Trauma to Addiction
'Addicts perish on a lonely Island of Addiction in midst of a vast ocean of pharmaceutical prosperity' (a Dr King quote I fit to this narrative)
Adverse childhood experiences (ACES) better known as trauma intertwine with teenage addiction into a strangling rope of death and family destruction.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACES) better known as trauma intertwine with teenage addiction into a strangling rope of death and family destruction.
I have a story that resonates with our youth. I have a story that will save lives. This is not bravado or arrogance. It's me sharing my tragic circumstances and my mistakes. My journey from abandonment at birth to violent sexual abuse from 3-5. From falling asleep driving at 19, killing my friend, and breaking my back to 10 years later while only a semester away from a psychology degree and working in management at Citigroup getting in a 2nd accident and breakng my neck becoming disabled.
Sharing my 14 year struggle with a pain medication harder to quit than heroin. Sharing what a year of torturous withdrawal was really like, but most importantly sharing how the seeds of abandonment, abuse, and trauma can fester inside and manifest later in life in destructive ways, especially addiction, if not dealt with.
I'm now an ordained minister and for three years I've helped several individuals get off drugs and overcome addiction just using Facebook, but prevention is so key and my calling and passion is to go to as many middle and high schools, church youth groups, juvenile detention centers, and anywhere else youth are.
I am an ordained minister but when it comes to addiction I vigorously follow the latest scientific and medical research. I have a background in psychology and extensively studied the sciences of addiction especially the Neuroscience of addiction and have a knowledgeable understanding of how the disease of addiction works in the brain.
I know how to speak to these kids. I know how to reach them. If I could share my tragic but powerful life story to a gymnasium of students lives would be saved. I've seen my story be the catalyst to young people changing their lives. Many having been through multiple rehabs before. But, the main point if my story is heard by our 6th-12th graders there will be many that remember my words when tempted. I've been able to share one time to a small group and there was murmuring and laughing at the beginning and before it was over there were tears flowing down many faces including two admitted gang members that I speak with regularly and have turned their lives around completely. Including one enrolled in GED classes. The sad reality is my personal adverse childhood experiences (ACES), abandonment and abuse, is found in a large percentage of today's young, mainly poor, generation. This falls in line with my passion for civil rights. We have a generation of fatherless children due to many different reasons including mass incarceration. This abandonment (absence of parent for any reason) effects the same no matter if it's the parents fault. An example would be a parent dying. The parent in a moral sense hasn't abandoned the child, but the trauma is the same. Then when you mix any form of abuse (sexual, mental, physical, psychological) with abandonment from birth to around 10-12 the percentage that has experienced both is almost identical to the percentage of children that begin experimenting with drugs by 13.
I have written to literally hundreds of churches looking for a partnership and not one response. Unfortunately and quite disturbingly this scourge is killing children everyday and in all honesty too many times it takes losing a child for people to become activists.
I want to thank you if you're still reading. It means a lot. I'm just a guy in a unique situation to save some lives. Importantly, parents need to hear this just as much as our kids. To begin to fix the issue it must take parents and children both involved. Im not looking to make money. I'm willing to go anywhere anytime and share my life story for free, but I don't know where to begin to becoming a public speaker or starting a non-profit. I am truly disabled without benefits. So, I can't finance anything. I'm not asking for money. I'm simply asking if you have advice? Do you know someone or an organization that might be willing to help? Anyone that can just open a door?
Thank you so much for your time,
Rev Jason Allen
revjeallen@gmail.com
Link to short version of my life story
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