International overdose awareness day events planned

Today is International Overdose Awareness Day, and two events planned will highlight the need for attention and prevention.

Kristi Booth, herself in long-term recovery, is working to get her own not-for-profit agency up and running. Recover Out Loud Harm Reduction and Recovery Services will aim to reduce harm associated with substance use.

“I believe any positive action is recovery,” Booth said. “I just want to meet people where they are, without asking anything of them, treating them with the dignity and respect that they deserve.”

Today, Booth said, communities around the world will come together in remembrance of those who have died or suffered permanent injury because of drug overdose.

She is organizing a remembrance walk, starting at 7 p.m. at the bandshell in Capaha Park in Cape Girardeau.

The event will commence with a prayer, then speakers, including a mother who lost her child to overdose, and another speaker who will give harm-reduction techniques to help those who are still using to stay alive.

A list of names of those who have been lost in the community will be read as candles are lit, Booth said, and following that, the group will walk silently along Broadway to Houck Stadium, then back to Freedom Corner at North West End Boulevard and Broadway, obeying traffic laws.

“I hope this event shows that drug addiction and the stigma associated with it truly has the power to kill,” Booth said.

More information is at www.facebook.com/events/807928629749477.

Also today, at 6 p.m., Gibson Recovery Center is teaming up with Family Counseling Center and Community Counseling Center to hold an overdose-awareness event. The event will be livestreamed to the Recovery Fest 2020 Facebook page, and will include a speaker. Teresa Ruppel will give a small talk in memoriam of those who died of drug-related deaths, said Scott Moyers, peer support specialist at Gibson Recovery Center.

“We will be releasing environmentally friendly balloons that have the names of people we know who have died of drug-related deaths,” Moyers said.