READING, Pa. \u2013 The Reading Fightin Phils are fighting back against addiction. Thursday night, FirstEnergy Stadium hosted the Fifth Annual Recovery Awareness Night, sponsored by the Berks Counseling Center and SOS Berks.<\/p>\n
Participants there didn\u2019t set out to celebrate just recovery, though.<\/p>\n
“We want to celebrate life tonight,” said Yvonee Stroman from the Council on Chemical Abuse.<\/p>\n
“We’re here to show the individuals that, yeah\u2026it is possible and there is hope,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sixteen Berks County organizations were on hand at the event to help connect people to resources for prevention, treatment and recovery.<\/p>\n
“We want to raise the awareness that recovery is possible and indeed inevitable for those that desire to seek treatment,” Stroman said.<\/p>\n
She says events like these are important because addiction can be hard to talk about.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis gives individuals permission to come out, celebrate, enjoy life, but get some information in a friendly, safe environment,\u201d Stroman said. \u201cThere’s no judgment…”<\/p>\n
Not only are information and resources shared. The organizations have people in recovery available to talk with others \u2014 something James Williams of Peace and Harmony House says is essential.<\/p>\n
“If you’re in the beginning of recovery, even if you’re, you know, you’re not in recovery and you just see other people in recovery, it can very much help you out in the long run,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n
The event also helps to build community. That\u2019s something Diana McCoy, someone in active recovery, says can change people’s lives.<\/p>\n
“It brings everybody together,\u201d she said. \u201cIt shows people that you can really do it \u2014 that you can put the drug down and move forward with your life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Reading Fightin Phils are fighting back against addiction. Thursday night, FirstEnergy Stadium hosted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14672,111910,349,524,227,69863,24584,47,7340,128,130,129,40672],"class_list":["post-265070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-addiction","tag-awareness-night","tag-berks-county","tag-community","tag-education","tag-fightin-phils","tag-firstenergy-stadium","tag-mental-health","tag-prevention","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}