New Riverview addiction center to hire 150 full-time workers
Penny Fletcher
These days, just about every family has a relation, or someone they know, with an addiction, whether it’s to drugs, alcohol, binge eating, prescription pills or some other thing that eventually becomes the center of that person’s life.
Addiction runs in families. I know, because it runs in mine. Several of my family members have addictions to various drugs, some prescribed, some not. It’s a heart-breaker for me every day. Watching smart, beautiful, friendly people lose interest in everything good about their lives breaks the spirit of a whole family. The addict becomes the focus of everyone’s attention, leaving the rest of the family out in the cold.
As the addiction worsens, the parent, or child, or brother or sister, or other caregiver of a family must focus more and more attention on cleaning up the addict’s messes; often bailing them out of jail and other troubles; trying to get them therapy and help, and gradually losing a grip on their own life and everyone else’s in it.
With the health insurance crisis the way it is now, help often comes from support groups, which are free and usually 12-step. They’re great, but concrete therapy and psychiatry and addiction help are needed to really beat the problems addicts do to their bodies and leave others to solve financially, legally, and often far worse.
Mental illness often accompanies addiction. In fact, many people take pills, alcohol or illegal drugs because they have real physical and mental problems that are going untreated, and that is so sad because it is a constant spiral. In my family, it sometimes gets to the point where I wonder “which personality I am going to meet today.”
But help is coming to Riverview in a big way and not just for addicts and their families. The American Addiction Center is part of a nationwide group of centers that focus on treatment of all addiction; and the future — not the past or present.
You can read more about it at www.americanaddictioncenters.org, but for now, let me say they’ve already had one Job Fair in South County and are going to have another one in June.
They will be hiring 150 people for full-time work, in administrative, maintenance, medical support staff, R.N.s, drivers and many other available positions.
You may apply in advance online at careers.americanaddictioncenters.org, or email aaccarreers@contactaac.com in advance with questions. Or check with Aaron Butler, the company’s head recruiter, based in Tennessee, at 615-927-2533. Target opening date is July 1. The address is 12012 Boyette Road, Riverview, FL 33569.
Hopefully, many will find help, if not there, somewhere, before it is too late. I have seen the way drugs and alcohol completely wrecked several promising lives.
Reach out. I, for one, must believe that anything is possible. As an addict or family member of an addict — I pray that you do, too.