Set to Save Lives –
August 16, 2018 – n March, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared addiction a crisis and requested state leaders to come up with a strategy to combat it. Several hundred people met in downtown Portland Thursday to do just that. “Addiction knows no boundaries,” Jordan Hansen with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation said. Hansen said he battled with addiction 10 years ago. “This is somebody that was unemployed, had health issues and I didn’t care if I lived or died,” Hansen said.
All these years later, after turning his life around, he says he is working to help others do the same. “It has been ten years since I’ve found it necessary to use drugs and alcohol to get through the day and I am able to be useful to people still suffering and that is why I love my work,” Hansen said. At the community planning event Thursday, Brown signed a declaration to make September “Recovery Month” in Oregon. Brown shared how her family was affected by addiction with those in the room. “My grandfather was a doctor, he was absolutely brilliant, but he struggled with drug addiction his entire life,” Brown said. She talked about the trials and tribulations the disease of addiction has caused for her family. “Even though my dad and his brothers went on to lead what we would consider extremely successful lives,” Brown said, “It is clear that 40 to 60 years later the course of my family was steered by the addiction.”
