“The best conference I’ve ever attended, and I’ve been to quite a few!” a counselor told me.
“Hard boiled eggs for an afternoon snack. Wow!” wrote the treatment program executive.
“There was a special kind of energy among attendees,” said Stan Stokes, MS, LPC, CCDC, founder of Bridging the Gaps in Winchester, Virginia and conference speaker.
“You attracted people from all over, didn’t you!” noted Renée Zito, Director, California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs (ADP), our Saturday luncheon speaker and honored guest who discovered the man sitting next to her at our Sacramento event came from Hodgdon,
Maine.
Brain Repair for Addictive Disorders: Successful, Cost-Effective, Drug-Free Therapies conference is history and I am a happy Executive Director of the hosting agency, Community Addiction Recovery Association (CARA).
The thank you notes are sent, especially to Renee Zito who allowed the ADP to serve as our co-sponsor this year. My hardworking Administrative Assistant, Marina, is taking a few well-earned days off. Little Glenn County, around 100 miles north of Sacramento, is finishing a grant proposal to SAMHSA (the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) to integrate into their existing Drug Court the nutrition and acupuncture protocols they learned at the conference. The President of the Board of CARA discovered we actually made $6,000 on the event. Since our 2007 conference lost over three times that amount I am ecstatic. People liked what they heard. They liked how we walked our talk, providing wholesome food throughout the conference: eggs, sausage, whole grain bread for breakfast; country potatoes, chicken one day and salmon the other, and grilled vegetables for lunch; apples, hard boiled eggs, and nut mix for afternoon snacks.
The audio recordings of the majority of speeches are available from Audio Chuck at audiochuck@comcast.net or 916-335-0020. His costs are reasonable and there are discounts for multiple purchases. See more details at our website at www.carasac.org/Conference/index.shtml
Video recordings are currently being edited, as we raise money to do them one by one. The first to be available in a matter of days will be Stephen Schoenthaer, PhD, speaking on Prison-Based Nutritional Research: Less Violence, Lower Costs. (Nutritional interventions implemented in a variety of state and local institutions in California, New York, Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Kansas were able to dramatically reduce violence and improve cognition and behavior. Learn the costs and implications of these six controlled trials). Contact us if you are interested in purchasing a copy of Dr. Schoenthaler’s presentation for $25.
The Conference Resource Book is also available to the public, for $35 each plus $6 for shipping. The Book includes speaker bios, some of their handouts, and the majority of PowerPoint presentations.
I feel so blessed to have had the support of my Board of Directors Joanne Bodine, Nancy Fiorini, and Allen Green as well as our clever, resourceful Administrative Assistant Marina Roy and talented graphic designer/printer Maria O’Neil of MO Graphics to help me create a conference that pleased participants, exhibitors, and speakers alike. Our goal is to change the paradigm of addiction treatment in this state, adding nutritious food and nutritional supplements from day one in treatment everywhere, and using acupuncture to help every client begin to feel good as soon as each enters a treatment door.
The next holistic nutrition-based conference will be in June, 2010 in Miami, Florida, hosted by Giordano & Goldfarb Holistic Addiction Treatment, Inc. If you want to be on our mailing list, send us an email at info@carasac.org. We are looking forward to hearing from you. Meanwhile, you won’t mind if I beam from ear to ear, relieved that the months of anxiety are over, and joyful knowing the conference was appreciated by all. =)
Carolyn's Blog 