Black Horizons; 2337; Cycle of Recovery

Hello and welcome to Black Horizons, I'm Chris Moore. One in nine women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime, for Black women cancer statistics are even more alarming. There is a new local special coming to WQD called the breast test. It's designed to provide practical information for women about saving their breast from cancer. Later in today's show, you'll learn more about that program. The YWCA will also join us later to tell us about a new career exploration workshop that they call Job Plus. But first, how do we treat African -American men who are recovering from their addiction to alcohol and drugs? There is a new Bill Moya special called Circle of Recovery coming to PBS that seeks to answer that question. We'll show and tell you more about it shortly. First, we want to get a local perspective on the subject of African -American men in recovery from Darrell Williams, Director of the Pittsburgh Recovery Centers, Homewood Brushton Center. Darrell, welcome to our program. We're glad to have you here. The basis of the

Bill Moyus program, Circle of Recovery talks about African -American men needing more than the traditional recovery programs that have been instituted and worked so well for so many. But they have extra problems that they say they have to deal with, such as racism. Do you feel that that's a factor in an African -American male's attempt to recover from addiction? I would have to say yes to that question, Chris. For one thing, dealing with drugs and the depths that the drugs take us to, in that process, we lose a lot of our self -esteem, our pride. As soon as we hit bottom, we end up with, you know, demeanable jobs. That's one of the reasons why we face a lot of racism. But wouldn't that be true of any addict? I mean, isn't there a certain stigma, no matter what your color, once someone learns you've been addicted to some chemical? That's the other half of it.

Once you get that word, addict attached to you, as a lot of that's through ignorance that people don't know the difference between between recovering people and just addict. There's a stigma once in addict, always in addict. We find out that that's not true. I might be an addict for the rest of my life because I believe it's a disease, but I don't have to be an active drug addict. I could be a recovering drug addict. You say, I, you are currently in that situation. Yes, I am. How would you describe yourself as a recovering drug addict? I'm a recovering drug addict. I've been recovering for a little over seven years. So you've been clean for seven years. So you say it can be done. Oh, yes, it can. Okay. And I guess I go back to the first question again. Do black men need special help? Do African -American males need special help to

recover? Did you find that to be a personal experience? I found that when I started reaching out for help, I reached out to some brothers that had been clean for a while and joined their support group. They understood better than perhaps a white therapist or a white person who is recovering? Well, our needs always, we've always needed that extra because we've always been down the most. We've been oppressed in this country. And our needs need to be addressed. We as African -Americans and it's community know what our needs are. It would be real hard for me to go to. And it really doesn't matter if it's a white therapist or a Keller really doesn't matter. It would have to be for me, someone that was recovering, that would be able to understand where I've been. We had real empathy. They've been there so they know what you're going through. And therefore they can help you a little bit. It's real hard for someone that hasn't

been in those shoes to come with the whole picture. I mean, you can only come with half of them. Yeah, I guess you tend to early on in the fight for recovery. You might tend to be able to run games on somebody who doesn't know, but somebody who's been through it, isn't it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's what makes it unique for us. We need that kind of support. But I have a group of guys that I've particularly since I've been blessed with recovery. I've been sponsoring quite a number of guys. And I believe in recovery that the males should stay with the males and the females should stay with the females in a way. We have a pretty strong support group because we understand each other. Not only is the needs that we need for recovering, but just as men. Now, you're operating in the homewood area of our city. Lately in the news, we've seen the Pittsburgh police, bum rush, the brothers on the street who are dealing the drugs, those kinds of

problems. It takes more than that's part of the solution, but it takes more than that armed crack down on the circulation of drugs. It takes a little bit more. Are people in Pittsburgh, particularly in homewood, brushing, getting the kind of help that they need? Our philosophy is like this, Chris. If you're dealing drugs, that's your business. If you want help, that's our business. Our doors are open to anyone seeking help. That's where we leave the line at. The city of Pittsburgh have their expertise, people to take care of the drug sales and the crime. What you seem to be saying is that somebody has to hit their own personal rock bottom before they'll seek help. If they're forced into something, they may not be genuine and may not really want to get out of it. Do you really have to wait that long before you really want to get out of it and help yourself? No, it's been my experience, Chris. You know, everybody comes through our doors for, you know, it might be many reasons. I'm stipulated by, you know, probation officer or a wife sick and tired of them, whatever.

And it don't matter how you come, long as you come. Sooner or later, if you stick around long enough, you'll hear something that might save your life. It really doesn't matter what your intentions are. You know, our staff at the recovery center, all of them are recovering. So it goes back to what we were talking about early. Once you come in there, we kind of know you can come in with the game if you want, but we kind of know where you're coming from. Somebody are picking up because you've all been down. We'll sit back and smile. May I ask you, what was it for you that seven years ago that caused you to to get into a program and get into recovery? A lot of people ask that question. My, I'm 38 years old and my drug addiction started pretty early and spanned from about from 12 to I was 31 years old. And I've used a lot of drugs and alcohol in, you know, those years. To sum that up, I would just simply say just all those years of being abused in one chemical after another and being in the

streets. You know, unfortunately, this is a family disease and what we do affects everyone around us. You know, and the ones we love the most, we hurt, you know, the ones that get affected. And it was just a combination of those years. And I have, you know, I am happy we married today and my wife was still together. After 20 years, same lady. After 20 years. But it was just a combination of that and my own personal abuse that I just got tired of it. And I had to find another way to live. Is there somebody out there that you think or they think they might want to get in touch with you? Is there phone number they can call so they can get a hold of you and get some help? You can call the Picksburg Recovery Center on with breast and 731 -2622. Okay. Would you repeat that number a couple of times? 731 -2622. One more time. I just want to make sure they get 731 -2622. They can call you

up almost any time and get some help. Right. We're open. We're using it from 930 to 530. Okay. Well, thanks for being here with us and for shading some light on this very important subject that affects us all. Thanks, Sarah. The Bill Moria Special that I mentioned earlier titled Circle of Recovery will air October 23rd at 9pm. Here's a short promotional announcement that will give you a little of the flavor of the program. Once they were lost, so what did drugs do for you? They made it okay to be black, angry, and out of control. That's how much anger I had inside of me if it was normal killing. Today, they struggled to rebuild their lives. Only this time, they're not alone. Now they have each other. We got to get past that anger, that resentment. Bill Moria is joined as a group of men fighting to overcome addiction on Circle of Recovery. Circle of Recovery October 23rd at 9pm. The black community faces so many

problems. Sometimes it's the produce of a talk show host is difficult to talk about drugs and all the other things employment and other things that really go on. But we've got some other things on this program that you're really going to be interested in and I hope you'll stay tuned. Well, you know, time really flies. It seems like just last week I was informing you of activities that would keep you busy for a whole weekend. Oh my gosh, that was last week already. Well, here's this week's installation of the Tanner calendar. We want you to take advantage of the Carnegie because they're currently offering classes in such things as natural history, music, art and anthropology. You name it and they're likely to have it. The number to call is 622 -3288. Times winding down for you to take advantage of other great classes. These are offered by arts in the parks and when October is over, so are they. What more can I say except to call 665 -3664? If you were planning a quiet evening at home

tonight, I'd reconsider. The Phoenix Dance Company is making their United States debut at the Fulton Theatre tonight and you won't want to miss it. These men and women ooze in the G as they combine street dancing with a Caribbean flair. The music is equally as eclectic. You won't find dancing like this at Arthur Mary, call 456 -6666 to find out more. Now through December, you can explore the controversial and creative world of fluxes at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. International renowned fluxes artist Ben Patterson has returned to Pittsburgh for the first time in 30 years and he's brought his fluxes deluxe exhibition with him. A former Pittsburgher, we had him on the show last week. Words can't aptly describe this international arts movement, so I suggest you check it out for yourself. Call 3610873 for more information. We began an end this week's calendar with the Carnegie. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh will hold its

25th, which annual is it? I can't read the prompt. The 27th annual Fall Festival of Children's Books October 25th. This is an all -day event that includes autographing and a panel discussion with speakers. There's WQED as a station committed to children and literacy. I encourage you to go. If you want to know more, call 622 -3169. And don't forget if you have an RC event, please write us at the Tana Calendar and care of Black Horizons WQED TV, 4802, 5th Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213. Well, careers, they're out there, but how can you decide which one is best for you? One way is by participating in one of the variety of career workshops that periodically take place. Guess what? The YWCA is sponsoring a career exploration workshop that they call job place, a job plus, right? Job plus. Oh boy, the prompt is doing real good. I

can't type it anymore. And if you're looking for a career, you want to take part in here to tell us more our Karen E. Payne, Ola Jackson, and Dion Thornhill. Welcome to our program. Karen, tell us a little bit about the program and why you came up with it. Okay, the job plus program is a program that originated in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was brought to Pittsburgh in 1989. It's a job training program for young single women who were parents as teenagers. The age ranges from 18 to 25 and we go through a lot of job training and then we get the girls' jobs. Dion, you're a graduate of the program? Yes. Okay, what was it like for you? It was a fun experience. It was a little difficult also. Oh, they made you work? Yes, you worked hard. It's carried a hard task mask. Yes. And she's nodding her head too. But it helped you in the

long run. Yes, it does. What was it like? What were you trained in? What were we typing, clerical, that type? Like we learned a lot of things about banking also. What are you doing now? Well, right now I work at Take Here while I'm looking for a job. Okay, so you're a recent graduate and you're working in a daycare while you're looking for a job, but you feel prepared. Yes. And you go out there and you know you're ready to accept a job if it's offered, right? Yes, you're job ready. All right, Ola Jackson, you're always involved in so many good efforts around here and you're doing PR and everything else. What is your involvement in the program? I'm the coordinator for the Career Exploration Workshop. That's a two -part program. The first part consists of a what we call good professional image workshops, which will consist of a hair show, makeup, and a fashion show. It's extremely informal. They can ask questions. Was that one of the fun parts of the hair show and the makeup and the fashion show work? Well, yeah, it is. It's the fun part. Okay, but there was a lot of work too. But that

part is only to prepare them for the job interview. Yeah, I understand. We'll have some life in the Bureau of Employment Security come in and talk about the job forecast for the 90s. So the ladies can have an idea what's out there when they do go out there looking for employment. We're also inviting people with various professions to come and talk to them about how they can go about obtaining their goals and objectives, like a one -on -one conversation and a few speakers. And the dates for this is November 2nd and November 3rd at the Kingsley Center in Liberty. Okay. It sounds like a rigorous program. How do you decide what jobs are the ones that you're going to try to help people prepare for? Well, Chris, one of the things that makes this program unique is the fact that I go to businesses, corporations, and other institutions in within the city and form a partnership. And the partnership is I can supply entry level employees to the businesses who are

already trained and prepared as far as getting to work on time, having babysitting arrangements made prior to the first day and, you know, for the length of the time that they're working. So that there's not a high level of absentee isn't all those other associated problems. Yeah, a lot of the businesses find that when they get entry level employees, they have to go through training and once the training takes several months, the young women or men in some cases leave. So the training was in vain. So I form a partnership, they tell me what skills are needed to pass the interview and to get the job. And then I come back, put together a curriculum and I prepare the young women for specific jobs. So your program is fluid enough that you're ready for what's going to be needed in tomorrow's world of work, right? Because on a small scale.

But I mean, you say in touch with the businesses, you form the partnership. I know the kind of people that they're looking for and how they expect them to be prepared when they enter the workplace. And do you find, because I heard just the other day, I was over the Manchester Craftsman's Guild and they have a program that is preparing entry level technicians to go in. And they're working also in partnership with a lot of businesses. And one of the things that I heard, one of the personnel, people say I was sitting with this person at a table. And he said that people are really not prepared when they enter the job market. You find that same kind of thing in terms of having the babysitter arriving on time. What do you think is going on, older, where people are not really aware of the prerequisites of the work of day work? I think that that's what's good about our program that we're having. We'll be talking to them one on one, bringing professionals in to address those areas that aren't usually talked about. So hopefully this will be something that we can get across. Deanna, I don't know if you're not in your head and

you just got a smiling over there. When you went through the program, did you discover things like that that you didn't know that you weren't aware of? Yes, you discovered it was helpful in a lot of ways, especially to babysitting because a lot of people don't realize that they really need to get it together before you start. They try to find a babysitter, but it's not stable. You need to have a stable mindset. Oh my, I said she was going to take care of it. She said no, she's got to go. She had more than one babysitter backups and everything. We learned all about that. Have a backup babysitter. If the child sick, you can't take the day care. So it helps a lot and you learn all about that. And going to the program, it teaches you awesome because if the baby sick, you can't bring it to the program. You have to have a backup babysitter. It helps us a lot. Something tells me you've done your job well with Deanna. If you've done as well with Deanna, as you're doing with the others, I know it's going to be a great success. Why hope so? We've been doing it for two and a half years. I

think our rate of placement is about 85%. It is rather high. Much luck to you with the program. We appreciate you being here, letting our viewers know about it. The job plus training and placement program will take place on November 2nd and 3rd. For more information, simply call 361 -5336. That number again is 361 -5336. Give them a call, won't you? Well, earlier in our show, we told you about a new program coming to WQED called the Breast Test. It's designed to give women the information they need to save their breast from cancer. Joining me now to talk about it is one of the show's host, Nancy Polinsky. And Nancy, before we go any further, I have to tell everybody that Elaine effort, my back up here at Black Horizons, is the other host of the program and we're just glad to have you here to talk about it. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure after all these years of working together to finally be a guest on your show. Well, we're glad to have you. Let me tell you. So tell us about the breast test. What kind of information

will you impart? We will impart to people everything that they need to know about saving themselves as much as one possibly can from breast cancer. I got to tell you Chris, this has been an incredible learning experience for me just preparing for this show. I went into it like I assume most American women view breast cancer. It's out there. I know it exists. It won't happen to me. And I'm not going to do one of those exams every month, but it's got time. And, you know, really, is it going to happen to me? Well, it is, I didn't know this. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in all women. Second only to lung cancer. And as you know, if you don't smoke, you reduce your chance of getting lung cancer. There's nothing you can do to reduce your chances of getting breast cancer. We are also susceptible to it. There's no preventative behavior. Well, there's, we will have experts on the show who can talk about general healthy living that can possibly reduce the

chances of getting any kind of cancer. But in general, one in nine of all women will in the course of their lives be diagnosed with breast cancer. It is scary. And as you said at the top of the show, black women are a little bit more susceptible. It seems mostly because early screening is not done as often in black women as it is in white women. And that is the key. And that is the most important thing that we hope to impart to viewers. That if you can catch breast cancer in very early stages, your chances of survival are much greater and the treatment options available to you are much more varied in white spread. So in addition to self examination, I guess you will be promoting the use of mammograms. Absolutely. Now that is something we don't quite understand why so many American women ignore mammograms, but they are the most accurate, precise way of diagnosing early screening breast cancer. And it is strongly advised that every woman over 50 have won every single year and yet

studies indicate that only 20 % of all women over 50 have won every year. I wonder if there are other reasons. For instance, you talked about black women and the fact that they don't necessarily get the early screening. I wonder if health care companies are involved enough to pay for those extra kinds of benefits that are probably deemed not life threatening at the big issue. It is a very big issue, a very big political issue. We will have people on the show to discuss that. And let me mention one of the most exciting components of this program is that we will have phone banks manned by doctors and nurses, trained medical specialists who would be there, a hotline, to answer viewer questions either privately just on the phone with the person, the doctor at the other end, or on the air if you think that other women would benefit from the answer to your question and you don't mind going on the air with it. These people will be able to answer your questions and we'll also be able to advise you as to where the nearest site accredited site is for getting a mammogram. And if you need it, we will be able to advise you as to how to

get a mammogram at very little or no cost if that's what you need. There are sources out there for help available to women who need it. No woman should go without a mammogram because her insurance doesn't cover it or she doesn't have the money. There's just no excuses to life. You know one of the things I like about working in public broadcasting is our unique ability to do programs like this that get the word out that talk about if it be a job training program that the YWCA is having, we're talking about drug addiction, we're talking about preventing things that can increase the quality of our lives as Americans. That's one of the things I like about that. Do you like that saying kind of thing? Well I've been at this station for going on five years and this isn't my first public TV station so I would have to agree with you. There is something rewarding about doing what we call here in the business, these outreach programs where we literally are trying to reach out to the community and say you know let's have this two -way communication going and see what we can do to help each other. Okay let's go over a couple of things one more time. First of all, the date and the time of the program. The date

is this Wednesday night at 10 o 'clock and it's a live special. We will go on the air at 10 and you should be by your telephones to call in with questions. Okay and manning that hotline and you'll be giving out the number that night so people can call in and emphasize it's a live program. We'll be medical experts, doctors, nurses and also other health care professionals. Health care insurance people. We will talk about cancer in general. We will talk about mammography, self -examination, the importance of physicians exams. We will have women with personal stories to tell, survivors who will talk about how important the early detection was to them. We will be offering information about renting a free rental of a video that will show you how to do a self -examination and we will offer a packet to our viewers which I believe we can probably offer to them right now. It's you simply have to write to - Well we have we just have to have that. Can we do we have that? Absolutely if you want more information on the breast test. Why don't you please write to us at WQED and box PO box info

that's i -n -f -o Pittsburgh PA -15213 and remember the breast test airs October 23rd at 10 p .m. Right? That's just coming Wednesday. It is. Okay how are you and Elaine going to handle this? This is dynamic dual getting together. It is. It is in part because there's a lot of information. There's a lot of people and they'll be a lot going on in the studio so Elaine will be on one side and I'll be on the other. It's in part because I waddle a bit these days and Elaine will handle the waddle walking and I'll handle the sitting but you know I think it's going to be a nice partnership. I've never had the pleasure of working with Elaine but I know from watching her on your show that she's dynamite. Yeah good people. Okay well I'm sure that everyone is looking forward to any last words you'd like to give us? No I just I just want to stress if I can that the survival rate if you catch cancer breast cancer early enough increases dramatically and we hope that in the course of the show we will encourage all women to go through early screening and and

make it a vital and regular part of their lives. Okay well I hope so and let me give you that address one more time. It's post post office box info that's P .O. box I .N. F .O. Pittsburgh PA 15213 for more information and remember again the breast test airs October 23rd at 10 p .m. We hope that you'll tune in. Thanks Nancy for being here we appreciate it and that's all the time that we have for this week's edition of Black Horizons. I'm glad you joined us and I hope that you'll come back for a visit next week. I'm Chris Moore. Thanks for being here.