May 1, 2006 Volume 3, Number  1

1.’Living It’ blog features life in recovery
2. Sober Day, USA: May 1
3. ST Web site gets 2000 visits in April
4. Continue Breaking the Silence!
5. Creating media coverage for local activities & events
6. Silent Treatment reporters in the spotlight
7. Success stories
8. On the calendar
 
1. ‘Living It’ blog features life in recovery
New on the Silent Treatment Web site: At 21, Carrick Forbes is living what she once thought she wanted, "a big, tough story." Her heroin addiction has been public since a 2005 "Dateline" segment featuring her and her family. By the time shooting started in 2003, she had watched both her father, Thom, and her mother, Deirdre, deal with their own addiction, alcoholism. The show prompted her father to chronicle the family's unique situation, candidly and unsentimentally, in his blog, “The Elephant on Main Street: An Interactive Memoir of Addictions and Recoveries.” It's been nearly two years since her last interview, and Carrick is sharing the realities of her daily recovery as the first voice in our rotating web log, 'Living It'.
 
2. Sober Day, USA: May 1
Sober Day, USA, sponsored by The Brent Shapiro Foundation for Drug Awareness, has been proclaimed in four states so far – Alabama, Michigan, Nevada and Wyoming – as a Day of Awareness on May 1. The foundation was established after the death last year of Brent Shapiro, a 25-year-old University of Southern California senior afflicted with the disease of alcohol dependency. His father, attorney Robert Shapiro, talked with Larry King and Donny Deutsch about addiction and his family's work to promote new awareness about drugs. To view the videos, click here.
 
3. ST Web site gets 2000 visits in April
Since launching April 1, over 2,000 visitors have visited Silent Treatment online.  Thanks to all the organizations that have begun to include information about Silent Treatment in their E-newsletters or have forwarded the URL for each new issue on to someone else. We have received a number of requests to include information and resources on our Web site and encourage you to continue to send your suggestions to sroff@pajournalism.com.
 
4. Continue Breaking the Silence!
The companion Silent Treatment Action Guide, Breaking the Silence, is available both at http://www.silenttreatment.info/action_guide.htm and through the mail. If you have not yet received the Outreach Brochure or the Action Guide, please let us know.  If you’d like more, send an email to sroff@pajournalism.com with “material request” in the subject line. Please include a list of the materials you would like, your mailing address and a brief description of how you plan to use the materials. 
 
5. Creating Media Coverage for Local Activities & Events
Silent Treatment: Addiction in America offers a great opportunity for your program or organization and your community partners to generate media coverage. The launch of the newspaper series on Aug. 2 is timed to take advantage of the energy that is building around National Recovery Month in September. The activities and events you undertake will have natural news hooks because they directly affect the communities you serve. Many prevention, treatment and recovery-related projects carry human-interest angles that are ready-made for local news placements. Breaking the Silence offers tips that can help you generate local media coverage of your activities. For the complete section on “Creating Media Coverage”, click here.
 
Silent Treatment also presents opportunities to partner with local radio and TV outlets. Local broadcasters are searching for ways to add rich, local content to the news stories and programs they produce. Often, the best place to start is by contacting the news director. She or he may refer you to a producer. The news director or producer, and not the program host, typically makes program decisions. For ways to connect with local radio and TV outlets, click here.
 
6. Silent Treatment reporters in the spotlight
Each month we feature a reporter for the Silent Treatment newspaper series. The second-day story, examining addiction research and treatment strategies and costs, is written by William Celis. Bill teaches journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles. He was the national education correspondent for The New York Times and a reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He now writes about social issues through the lens of public education and is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. He is the author of "Battle Rock: The Struggle Over a One-Room School in America's Vanishing West" (2003). He lives in Los Angeles.
 
7. Success stories
Recovery is everywhere! A small group of recovering addicts created a Web site to change the way people think about substance abusers and addiction. You'll find wristbands, calendars, CDs and free print ads and postcards to run in your community to help fight stigma, normalize recovery and offer hope.
 
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has launched Advancing Recovery: State/Provider Partnerships for Quality Addiction Care as part of its efforts to improve the quality of alcohol and drug addiction treatment in the United States by promoting evidence-based treatment practices. The four-year, $11 million program will support partnerships between treatment provider organizations that deliver care, and states that are in the unique role of being both the largest purchaser of publicly funded treatment services and regulators and licensers of those services. The Advancing Recovery Call for Proposals is available online at www.rwjf.org (under Grant Applications). Full proposals are due May 31.
 
8. On the calendar
Check out our comprehensive calendar at http://calendar.silenttreatment.info. It contains over 750 treatment- and recovery-related events across the country. Click any of the events to get more information and confirm dates and times. To have upcoming events included in our calendar, please send an email to sroff@pajournalism.com.

Some upcoming commemorations:
May 1: Sober Day, USA; for more info
May: Hepatitis Awareness Month; for more info
May 14–20:
National Alcohol and Other Drug Related Birth Defects Awareness Week, for more info
National Women's Health Week, for more info
 
Please forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues who may be interested in addiction treatment and recovery issues. Send details on coming events, successful projects, new findings or useful ideas to share to sroff@pajournalism.com. If you missed past issues, visit the archive section at http://www.silenttreatment.info/enewsletters.htm.
 
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