Butler County Community College is launching an initiative to educate the community and help combat the opioid addiction.
The new initiative is called “Reset Your Brain” and will include a forum in February, a series of classes in the spring and the formation of a 15-member advisory team.
BC3 has partnered with Cranberry Township licensed therapist and author Steve Treu. About 75 percent of Treu’s clients have opioid addictions. Over the last 15 years, he has mastered a methodology that incorporates physical, mental or spiritual skills that trigger the brain’s reproduction of endorphins and create a “natural high.”
“The sky is the limit, and I would like to be able to say that the end of the war of the opioid epidemic started in Butler County,” Steve Treu, of Quantum Revolution Counseling and author of 2016 books “Hope is Dope: Achieving Chemical Balance” and “New Eyes: A Unifying Vision of Science & Spirituality, said in a statement.
Treu will be among the speakers at the kickoff event of BC3’s “Reset Your Brain: A Revolutionary Approach to Opioid Addiction & Recovery,” scheduled for 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 6 at Succop Theater on the college’s main campus.
BC3’s “Reset Your Brain” initiative reflects an objective incorporated into the college’s new five-year strategic plan, a theme that focuses, in part, on quality of life.
“I love the fact that our new strategic plan allows us to go out and support our local community, really get in the trenches and work to make Butler County a better place to live,” Tracy Hack, BC3’s coordinator of Community Leadership Initiatives and one of 15 community members of what has become BC3’s opiate initiative advisory team, said.
Last week, Gov. Tom Wolf declared the opioid epidemic a statewide disaster emergency, the first of its kind for a public health crisis in Pennsylvania. The Drug Enforcement Agency reported the number of fatal drug overdoses in the state in 2016 to be 4,642, a 37 percent increase over 2015, Wolf’s office said.
