LINCOLN, Maine — Betheny Proctor believes that you could help save someone from addiction if you come to Prince Thomas Park Wednesday night.
The community health educator for the River Coalition is helping host her organization’s first candlelight vigil at the park off Lake Street at dusk, or at about 8 p.m., Proctor said Wednesday. The Save a Life Task Force of Lincoln is co-hosting the event, which takes place on International Overdose Awareness Day.
“I hope that we bring family members out, loved ones who have struggled with addiction. I want to see basically like a wide variety of an audience,” Proctor said Wednesday. “I want to reduce the stigma. I want people to come out if they are struggling, if they are in recovery and just kind of reduce the stigma attached to addiction.”
“Addiction is now looked at as a disease. People need the help and they need to accept it first,” she added. “By the community coming together and giving them that support, hopefully it will make them want to step forward and seek help.”
Drug-related fatal overdoses hit a record high of 272 in 2015. In the first six months of 2016, 189 people in Maine died by drug overdose, which is up 50 percent over the same time last year, according to a preliminary analysis compiled by Dr. Marcella Sorg, a University of Maine medical and forensic anthropologist who analyzes overdose deaths for the state’s attorney general. The attorney general’s office released the data last week.
Statistics pertaining to Penobscot County or the Lincoln Lakes region were not immediately available.
The River Coalition works to improve safe and healthy communities by enabling collaboration, strengthening partnerships and assisting in resource development, according to its website, rivercoalition.org. It serves Alton, Bradley, Greenbush, Milford, Old Town and the Penobscot Indian Nation and hosts monthly addiction awareness sessions in Lincoln with one of its members, Jessica Osno.
The Save a Life Task Force was established in April 2014 by a group of residents concerned with the rising substance use epidemic in the Lincoln area. It hosts monthly group meetings in the Lincoln Lakes region. Information about the group is available at its LincolnSaveALife Facebook page.
Vigil participants are reminded to bring their own candle and wear purple today in remembrance of those who lost their battle with addiction.
BDN writer Nok-Noi Ricker contributed to this report.