Oasis Recovery Center recognizes National Overdose Awareness Day

TIFTON, Ga. (WALB) - Several in southwest Georgia are using National Overdose Awareness Day to speak about how they overcame substance abuse. All in hopes to help someone else to do the same.

At Oasis Recovery Center, several people who overcame their substance addiction spoke to WALB News 10 about thier journey to get to a healthy and clean life.

Oasis’s recovery center is a peer lead program. This means everyone employed here is currently in recovery.

Evan Brown lived a 15-year addiction. Towards the end of his addiction, Brown said he lost just about everything. It wasn’t until he found himself in a hospital bed that he realized “this is not the life for me.”

“During that hospital visit, I finally had to ask the question, if God’s not going to let me die, then why am I living,” Brown said.

Vicky Bosse lived an off-and-on 30-year drug addiction. She said she celebrates the fact that she has no desire to alter her mind or change her mood for the use of substances. Bosse said most addictions stem from one’s environment. She encourages people in the community to pick up the free Narcan kit even if they don’t use drugs.

The reason behind that is that a high number of reported overdoses come from just your average passerby on their commute to work one day or coming home from the grocery store.

Brown said most people are afraid to report an overdose to law enforcement because they have thoughts of them getting in trouble with them. Under the Georgia Amnesty law, you are protected.

“We call it don’t run call 911 and this protects the person who calls to discuss no overdose or potential overdose victim and let the officers know that this individual needs their help,” he says

Oasis Recovery Center not only offers help to individuals struggling with drug addiction but a second chance to start a journey to a healthy and clean lifestyle.

Brown said this program has helped him.

Research shows that 75% of people with addiction survive and go on to live full lives.

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