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Leaders look to break cycle

CHARLES TOWN — Addiction is now being passed from one generation to the next, according to a panel of community, legal and health experts in the Eastern Panhandle.

Gail Boober, a magistrate for the Jefferson County Magistrate Court for 32 years, said she’s seen substance abuse carry over from one generation of family members to the next, possibly first starting with alcohol, then moving on to either prescription or illegal street drugs.

“I am seeing the grandparents, the parents, the grandchild and the great-grandchild,” Boober said.

“Because the parents had an addiction — then it was alcohol — some moved to cocaine and then to heroin.”

Boober said the irony is that today’s addicted parents, whose affliction incapacitates them, are handing children over to be raised by their own parents.

“The grandparents are raising the children that couldn’t, quite frankly, raise their own children without issues,” Boober said.

Boober was one of six community leaders and local experts who partook in “Health Care, the Cycle of Addiction and Our Kids,” a roundtable discussion held at the The Tate House in Charles Town on Monday afternoon. The discussion was organized by Talley Sergent, candidate for a seat in the U.S. House, representing West Virginia’s 2nd District.

Boober said part of her job now includes fielding temporary child custody requests by the parents of adults whose addictions have made them incapable of taking care of their own children.

“I’m trying to figure how to deal with the grandparents coming in in the middle of the night or next morning for temporary custody of their grandchild or their great-grandchild, because their mother or father, or both, overdosed down in the car in front of the Auto Zone, and they have to be given Narcan to bring them back,” Boober said.

Sergent said the overarching goal of any opioid plan must be to stop substance addiction from spreading from generation to generation.

“If we are serious about addressing the addiction epidemic, we must start with breaking the cycle of addiction with another generation of West Virginians,” Sergent said.

Penny Porter, executive director of the United Way of the Eastern Panhandle, said another strategic step in the opioid battle is shielding young children from the emotional trauma that is part-in-parcel with growing up in home with addicted parents.

With child brain development taking place the first two years of a child’s life, Porter said it’s critical that children be sheltered from adverse experiences.

Porter said young children exposed to family trauma increases the chances of those children engaging in high-risk behavior later in life.

Rhonda Eddie, executive director of the Jefferson County Day Report Center, said female addicts find it especially difficult to re-establish themselves back into the community. Once out, recovering mothers must also find a way to pay for child care, housing and transportation.

“It’s really difficult for women to re-establish themselves and to overcome all of those barriers to recovery, and reintegrating back into the community,” Eddie said.

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