A new fundraiser has been launched in Windsor to create a new addictions treatment program.
The Downtown Windsor Community Collaborative hopes to raise $150,000 by the end of September for a 90-day outpatient program called RE:ACT which stands for 'Recovery Education for Addiction and Complex Trauma."
It is different from other treatment programs because it focuses on the trauma which led to the addictions.
The program is currently running in Winnipeg and Surrey, BC with positive results and the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is a member of a committee focused on the evaluation and research associated with implementing the program.
Collaborative Executive Director Bob Cameron says this is about getting to the root cause of the addiction.
"Almost every addict experienced traumatic experiences as a child and is playing out in negative ways in negative behaviours as adults."
Cameron says the program hits a nerve because it gets a pulse on folk's pain.
"So dealing with just the addictions as symptoms, we want to get deeper than that to what is the engine that is driving it," he says.
Peer Support Worker and former addict Hughie Carpenter is 20 years clean. He says this program would have worked for him if it had been available.
"Had they got right to the trauma, had they got to the core, it's kinda like a doctor sitting beside you, talking to you and then realizes that you ate something that gave you the poison."
The program hopes to see its first clients in October and see 15 patients to start.
The program will run out of the All Saints Anglican Church in downtown Windsor which will keep overhead costs down.