NEWSLETTER | FALL 2012

The PowerofGiving

Finding his bridge over troubled waters Thaddeus is a fisherman. Every chance

he can get, he escapes to the water and gets re-attuned to nature and himself. “It’s my serenity,” he says simply.

He knows serenity sometimes can be hard to come by. Thaddeus also knows about finding himself: he’s just barely three weeks on the job at St. Cloud State as a graduate assistant for the college’s sober living program, a position he landed after graduating magna cum laude from Augsburg College and its own sober Step Up program. He’s helping to make decisions integral to the university’s new program; the same kind that helped him reshape his own

life after years of chaos.Thaddeus was 14 when he started abusing

alcohol. The summer after his senior year in high school, he admitted to his parents, Laura and Rich, that he was using hard drugs and needed help. He put off college and began a cycle of treatment centers, sober living, a couple semesters of school, relapse, repeat. “I put my parents through the ringer: a merry-go-round of deceit,” Thaddeus says.

“People would ask us, ‘Why do you keep sending your kid back to treatment time after time?’ Because you don’t treat cancer with one dose of chemotherapy,” says Laura.

In 2009, Laura and Rich’s family coun-selor told her to stop overanalyzing and to go with her gut. Her gut said to send their son to Hazelden.

Hazelden’s Parent Program allowed them to develop camaraderie with other parents—a welcome relief after a long stretch of isolation. Laura remembers, “At the end of the program, we had to choose one other parent and say what impression they made on us. That was

empowering: to tell another parent that they were supportive of us, how they influenced us, and for them to tell us, ‘How you conducted yourself inspired us.’”

While he was at Hazelden in Plymouth, Minn., Thaddeus served a week as his unit’s community leader, which later encouraged him to take a leadership position at Augsburg, and then to take on the graduate assistant-ship at St. Cloud State. “Hazelden gave me a little insight into my potential,” he says. “Hazelden grew that seed of restoring my self-confidence.”

The seeds of self-confidence helped when he relapsed once more after leaving Hazelden. This time, his parents took a different tack. “We’re done. You have to figure it out,” they told him. He checked himself into the Salva-tion Army and contemplated suicide.

Instead, he prayed. And then he spent the next five months working, staying clean, and earning his way into college, and then grad school, and back out onto the water where he finds his serenity each day—just as he helps other young people find their serenity.

“I’m very proud of my son,” says Laura, a loyal Hazelden supporter and a volunteer in a heroin community education program. “I still worry. I learned to have hope, but not to have expectations. I think this is something that transcends addictions. This is life.”

“Hazelden gave me a little insight into my potential.”

Dear Friends: Prescription painkiller overdose is now the No. 1 cause of acciden-

tal death in the United States, eclipsing that of traffic accidents. The Centers for Disease Control now defines this unprecedented problem as an epidemic. The path from the medicine bottle to the heroin needle is swift—users find that as their prescription supplies dry up and their doctor-shopping options run out, heroin becomes the cheaper and more available alternative.

As we saw in Thaddeus’ story, there is hope and life in recovery. Donors like you make that life-changing impact on those who turn to us for help. You are there when a mother’s gut says, “Send him to Hazelden.” You are there to plant the seeds of hope and set a young person on the path to recovery.

Letter from Jana Olslund, Vice President, Office of Philanthropy

Vice President, Office of Philanthropy, Hazelden Foundation

When you support Hazelden, you give to others who turn to us for help.Yes! I want to help Hazelden transform lives. Enclosed is my tax-deductible contribution of: ¨ $1,000 ¨ $500 ¨ $250 ¨ $100 ¨ $50

¨ Surprise us! $_______________________

I would like to direct this gift to: ¨ Area of Greatest Need ¨ Patient Aid

¨ Other _________________________________

I would like to pay by: ¨ Check (please make payable to Hazelden Foundation) Credit Card ¨ MC ¨ VISA ¨ Discover ¨ AmEx

Name on Card _____________________________

Card # __________________________________

Exp. Date _______________ Security Code _______

Signature ________________________________

Phone Home (____) _________________________

Work (____) _________________________

Email _____________________________________

¨ I am interested in estate planning. Please send me information.

¨ I have provided for Hazelden in my will.

If you wish to be removed from our fundraising list, please call us at 888-535-9485, e-mail us at optoutfundraising@hazelden.org, or write to us at Office of Philanthropy-OS 3, PO Box 11, Center City, MN 55012-0011. Please communicate your full name and address and allow 6-8 weeks for your request to be processed.

Donor Information:

Your privacy is important to us. Hazelden Foundation does not share its donor mailing list with outside organizations.Thank you for your support! Gifts are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.Your privacy is important to us. Hazelden Foundation does not share its donor mailing list with outside organizations.Thank you for your support! Gifts are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

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One does not wake up and decide out of the blue to trot a couple dozen miles. Such a task is taken up with purpose and dedication—and what better reason than to raise money for Youth Patient Aid?

Tim Helmeke, a case manager at Hazelden in Plymouth, recruited his colleagues John Fischbach and Mike Welte to strap on their running shoes for the October 7 Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon to help raise money for an Endowed Fund for Youth Patient Aid. The earnings from this fund will provide a regu-lar stream of income for Youth Patient Aid at Plymouth to help adolescents and young adults to find freedom from addiction.

With three schedules to juggle, the team members support each other through positive reinforcement. Helmeke says that “hobbling

along through the work day after a long run, trying to recover, trying to get back into shape again,” has been a challenge, but not as large as the goal they have set for themselves: to raise $10,000.Donations and support have come in steadily.

Hazelden in Plymouth is currently expand-ing services to fill a much needed void between the number young people who meet criteria for services, and the number who actually receive

the help they so desper-ately need. Expanded services will include an additional 32 beds, a female extended care program, a college-

bound track, an eating disorder track, adoles-cent and young adult intensive outpatient care, art and music therapy rooms, a gymnasium and work-out facility, and expanded family and mental health services.

Going the extra (26.2) mile(s) for Youth Patient Aid

The death toll from prescription painkiller overdose has more than tripled in the past decade,

prompting the Centers for Disease Control to define the problem as an epidemic. Hazelden has seen a corresponding increase in the number of patients seeking treatment for opioid addiction. Users range across ages and backgrounds: it could be the girl next door, or the guy you walk past at the office every day. Hazelden in Chaska recently held community information session, during which Joshua Lorenz, an officer and drug recognition expert with the Chaska (Minn.) Police Department, offered these telltale signs of a user:

Certain social behaviors among young people also are a giveaway:

from 3,000 deaths in 1999 to 15,500 deaths in 2009

Opioid use on the rise

Thursday, March 21, 2013 NAPLES RECOVERY LUNCHEON Waldorf Astoria Naples

Save the dates!Thursday, November 1 CHICAGO AWARDS BENEFIT Honoring Tom Ricketts and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. Proceeds from the gala will directly benefit Hazelden in Chicago.

• skin that is cool to the touch

• slowed speech and breathing; itchy arms, legs and face

• pinpoint pupils, even in the dark

• droopy eyelids

• being “on the nod,” with chin literally on the chest in a state that is both comatose and alert

• poor hygiene

• manipulations for money

• missing items from the house

• coded language in phone texts and on Facebook and other social media sites

• desperate efforts to hide while waiting for the next fix

• avoidance of family gatherings

The problem often starts with prescription painkillers in home medicine cabinets. “I can’t tell you the devastating stories of young people who finally acknowledge, ‘I stole my grandmother’s cancer medication,’” says Dave Dubin, an addiction counselor at Hazelden in Plymouth. “Count it. Lock it up. Clear it out.”

“‘Hobbling along through the work day after a long run, trying to recover,

trying to get back into shape again’ has been a challenge.”

© 2012 Hazelden FoundationHazelden and the Hazelden logo are registered trademarks of Hazelden Foundation.

hazelden.org651-213-4200 800-257-7810We invite you to call us with questions.We are available 24 hours a day.

Hazelden, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1949, helps people reclaim their lives from the disease of addiction.

Hazelden locationsCENTER CITY, MINNESOTACHASkA, MINNESOTACHICAGO, ILLINOISMAPLE GROVE, MINNESOTANAPLES, FLORIDANEW YORk, NEW YORkPLYMOUTH, MINNESOTASPRINGbROOk, OREGONST. PAUL, MINNESOTA