Traditions help solvent abusers

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An experimental program in Ontario is taking solvent abusers out to the bush and using traditional methods to heal them.

The four-week program relies on Anishinaabeg traditions to heal solvent abusers. It includes sweat lodges, drumming, crafts and singing and is conducted in Ojibwe with English translation.

Language, culture, values and heritage are crucial to a person's sense of identity, the Councillors believe.

"We speak that if you are not able to speak the language, you are going to have problems with your identity," Randy Councillor said at the Healing Our Spirit World-wide conference.

"We see this program as the people's program because it was designed by our elders, healers, youth and their families," the former prison addictions councillor said.

Okonagegayin started in 1987 "out of depression," he said. While working in

the prison system, he found as many as 25 per cent of the inmates had used inhabitants. Inhalant abusers are different from other drug and alcohol abusers and there are few programs to help them.

"Somehow society does not want to have anything to do with them. The courts, the jails don't want them. The majority of inhalant abusers end up in psychiatric wards."

The program is sponsored by Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora and funded by the Ontario government. The Ontario health ministry granted 30 months of demonstration funding in 1987. The program will be re-assessed this fall before permanent funding is given.

Participants spend 28 days at the camp, though they can stay longer if they need to, Roseanna said. They de-toxify, heal and then are reunited with their families during the final week. Families have to learn how to deal with the problems, too, the couple said. It can take up to 120 days for solvent abusers to de-toxify their bodies. They may have physical withdrawal symptoms like seizures long after they have gone through the camp program.

Solvents at the camp are not locked away.

"There's a reason for that," Roseanna said. "They need our trust and we need their trust. And when they come out from the camp, they go back into the communities. They will be exposed to that environment so they'd better learn to deal with it."

Some delegates at the conference were critical of the camp's use of alcohol in some ceremonies.

"Sometimes directions are given by our shaking tent ceremonies that, in order to counterbalance whatever your addiction is, then you have to utilize the very drugs you were abusing."

He gives the example of a youth who abused alcohol, inhalants and other drugs. He was told to collect all the substances he had been misusing.

"That then was offered to the spirits to reverse the addiction because we believe there is a negative and a positive factor in your life."

Substance abuse is a symptom of an underlying program, Randy said.

"We have no problem helping an individual getting rid of their toxins within that 28-day period. The bigger problem, of course, is of we don't deal with what's been plaguing this person from day one."