Today’s speakers, Laurie and Keegan Wicks talked about some of the difficulties their families faced while Keegan was in treatment. Laurie is an advocate at the Pennsylvania Parent Panel Advisory Council. Keegan works for The Rase Project has been in recovery for eight years.

While Keegan was in a treatment facility, he wasn’t allowed contact with his family for 10 days. He was 17 at the time. There isn’t any real evidence that blackout periods like this work, and it’s clear that it has some negative impacts on families who are concerned for their loved ones. I’m glad we have a section that addresses this problem people and their families face while in recovery. I think some important context that we’ll need to explain in the project is how treatment programs for addiction even came up with this process. I think it’ll shed an important light on the attitude programs take toward people with addiction.