[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 21, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H8220]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       RECOGNIZING RECOVERY MONTH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gohmert). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Rhode Island. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my 
colleagues in recognizing Recovery Month sponsored by the Substance 
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and by the Center for 
Substance Abuse and Treatment.
  As the co-chairman of the newly formed Addiction, Treatment and 
Recovery Caucus, it has been an eye-opening experience to speak with 
recovery groups working to bring an end to the stigma surrounding 
addictive disorders.
  At every event and every meeting, someone will inevitably take me 
aside, quietly whisper to me about how their parent had abused drugs 
for years without knowing it or how their child was attempting to 
rebuild their life after spending time in a juvenile detention facility 
for a drug-related crime or how they lost one after years of battling 
addiction. While these people quietly share their most intimate family 
secrets, they may not realize that addictive disorders impact over 63 
percent of our Nation and that they are far from alone.
  In the past several years, advancements in medical science have 
allowed us to take incredible images of the brain. The National 
Institutes of Drug Abuse, NIDA, has found evidence of tissue 
malfunction in the brain of those with addiction.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to show a few of the slides of what a new 
technology called the PET scan reveals to us about the various 
afflictions of the brain and brain disorders and how those brain 
disorders can appear now under a particular kind of X-ray. As everybody 
can see very clearly, brains operate differently; and those differences 
come from different metabolic differences and, in many respects, come 
from simply genetic differences that predispose some people to having 
mental disorders or having addictive disorders or having alcoholic 
disorders.
  The fact of the matter is now we do not have to be quiet because 
there is no stigma to alcoholism or drug abuse. This is no reflection 
on someone's character.
  My mother is still battling alcoholism. I am a recovering alcoholic. 
I know many other members of my family are recovering. I know many of 
my friends who have families where alcohol and drug abuse plague their 
families and run amok.
  The fact of the matter is, for so long, people have kept quiet about 
these illnesses because they felt that there was something wrong with 
them. The fact is now we have been able to look into the brain, see the 
areas that are affected, see the genetic components to alcoholism and 
drug addiction and begin to repair those.
  Just like every other illness, whether it be diabetes or asthma, drug 
and alcohol abuse is a chronic disorder like those illnesses. Yet, 
unlike diabetes and unlike asthma and like every other physical illness 
of the body, the physical illness and disorder of the brain is 
discriminated against by insurance companies in this country. As a 
result of it being discriminated against, millions of Americans do not 
get the treatment that they could be benefiting from in such incredible 
ways.
  Why should we provide this treatment? Well, aside from the fact that 
it is the humane thing to do, it actually saves us money. For one 
thing, it saves us all the cost to our prison system. We have, as a 
Nation, the largest prison population of any industrialized nation in 
the world; and Mr. Speaker, the sheriff of Los Angeles County says he 
runs the largest treatment and drug abuse facility in America. He runs 
the Los Angeles County jails, and that is appropriate saying that 
because, quite frankly, our jails are becoming the treatment of last 
resort.

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