STANDARD EXAMINER: Mental illness, addiction rally draws together lawmakers, recovering community

“I am a woman in recovery. I celebrate every day that I’m alive,” Jamie Justice, executive director for NAMI Utah told the cheering crowd. She also acknowledged that she lives with a mental illness, a secret she kept for many years. “In the moments when I feel despair, I look into my baby boy’s eyes and I’m so grateful that I did not take my life.”

Justice praised the audience for their own daily victories.

“I look at all of you and I’ve got so much hope. All of you are warriors in your own right,” Justice said. “You wake up every day and keep fighting and you keep going. And you keep proving to everybody in the world . . . that you are champions and will go forward every single day living the life you want to live, a life of hope and a life of recovery.

Several lawmakers who are sponsoring bills to benefit this community in recovery spoke Tuesday about their efforts to fund mental health and addiction treatment programs and to stem the tide of opiate and suicide deaths.

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Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy is sponsoring HB308, which will establish a needle exchange program that reduces harm to drug users and also provides an opportunity to interface with people who can introduce them to treatment opportunities.

“If you had told me a year ago that a white Mormon would be sponsoring a needle exchange bill I would have said you were crazy,” Eliason said. But his landmark legislation cleared the Utah House 72-0 and now awaits action in the Senate.

Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clinton told the crowd how far such legislation had progressed over the past decade.

“We didn’t talk about mental illness, we didn’t talk about substance abuse,” Ray said. “And its because of everything you guys have done, we brought it to the forefront. We’re able to . . . work on it and try to fix it.”

Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, is sponsoring SB77, a bill that would allow full Medicaid expansion under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Davis pointed to a sign in the crowd that said “We’re worth it.”

“Yes you are, everybody is worth having access to quality health care that they need,” Davis said.

Las Vegas residents Stephon Lofton and Jared Barker found themselves in recovery programs in Salt Lake City. They participated in Tuesday’s rally.

“Treatment is going well,” Lofton said of his five months at Odyssey House, acknowledging that he got caught up in methamphetamine use and wasn’t going to stop on his own. “So drug court sent me to Utah to get me out of my environment.”

Josie Shaffer, a recovering heroin addict from Minnesota, said she’d been in Salt Lake City for two weeks but sober for 93 days.

“This program has definitely saved my life. I want to live a clean and sober life,” Shaffer said.

The Rally for Recovery was hosted by USARA (Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness) and NAMI-Utah (National Alliance on Mental Illness-Utah).The rotunda event was preceded by the Walk to Remember outside the Capitol to commemorate lives lost to addiction and mental illness.

Contact reporter Cathy McKitrick at 801-625-4214 or cmckitrick@standard.net. Follow her on Twitter at @catmck.