Leading recovery
Mentor promotes ‘miracles’ in 3-location support group
DAMASCUS – Tom Fritz leads the drug and alcohol recovery group of Celebrate Recovery, a church-based effort in Salem, Damascus and Malvern.
As an eight-year mentor in the group, Fritz said he cannot count the number of recovery “miracles” he has seen.
He has held various positions with Celebrate Recovery but insists today, “I’m a mentor, we lead the drug and alcohol group,” adding there are countless other groups that Celebrate Recovery encompasses, including anger management, co-dependency and anything from A to Z.
“As Christians we want to see people succeed,” he said, explaining the co-dependency disorder as “I’m not happy, then others end up not being happy.”
More clearly, according to thebridgetorecovery.com website, it is known as “relationship addiction” because people with co-dependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.
“The disorder was first identified about 10 years ago as the result of years of studying interpersonal relationships in families of alcoholics.”
Symptoms include low self-esteem, people pleasing, imaginary boundaries between the person and others with the consequence of reacting to everyone’s thoughts and feelings, dysfunctional communications, dependency and denial.
Fritz said Celebrate Recovery is “hands down” the largest recovery group in the area with its central campus in Damascus where at 6:30 p.m. each Thursday some 150 people meet. They are people who have struggled with addictions of all kinds.
Last November, Fritz spoke at the “Do No Harm” drug symposium in Salem that featured speakers from criminal justice, mental health and recovery agencies, the medical community, Ohio CAN and people in recovery.
On May 20, Celebrate Recovery will be partnering with Ohio Can Change Addiction Now (CAN) which recognizes addiction is a family disease for which families need recovery, too. It says families are the missing piece to solving the epidemic of addiction.
Fritz said, “The interesting thing about Celebrate Recovery is that we’re not counselors. We follow the 12-step program based on the Beatitudes or blessings set down by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible.
“We believe Christ can heal any and everything,” Fritz said.
As head of the drug and alcohol group, Fritz grasps the importance, noting drugs “are really rampant”
During the “Do No Harm” symposium, Brian McLaughlin, the director of the Columbiana County Drug Task Force, said the county is on pace to beat its overdose (OD) death record this year.
“Initially ODs were mixed with other drugs to make that high. Dealers cutting it up more,” he said.
Users would shoot up more and there were more ODs.
“There’s nothing but heroin now,” he said, but about a year ago they noticed fentanyl in the southern part of the county.
“Fentanyl is 40 times stronger than heroin,” McLaughlin said, “and is now in the southern part of the county. It’s all fentanyl … carfentanil is 100 percent stronger. Carfentanil as big as a grain of salt can OD you.”
Fentanyl and carfentanil can be absorbed through the skin, he said.
McLaughlin cited prescription drugs, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and opiod pain pill use as putting people in more susceptible percentage groups to use heroin.
The opiod pain pill use came from over prescribing pills, something in the cupboard, and much of it starts with kids, he said.
Within the last two weeks in Trumbull County, 23 drug overdoses were reported in two days.
Fritz said there are 15 to 20 people who regularly attend the Celebrate Recovery Thursday meetings in Damascus.
“New people come and feel it out. It’s a big step … trying to put a stake in the ground. Countless people have had victory over drugs,” he said.
Some, Fritz explained, then go into the abuse group to unshackle themselves from other problems.
“Once they get free from one thing, they then deal with another.”
Fritz said it is a great community service offering encouragement.
“There’s a lot of good Biblical counsel. I tackle everything with God’s word,” he said.
The main campus is at Damascus Friends Church, 28857 Walnut St., with a branch in Salem at DFC Salem, 1300 Franklin Ave., which was purchased last year.
DFC-Malvern is in the old high school at 401 West Main St.
For more information on Celebrate Recovery, visit www.dfcnow.com, or www.celebraterecovery.com, or call Fritz at 330-305-2522.