Rising Above
Anthony Elia
Addiction in the Chaldean Community
By Cal Abbo
For Anthony Elia, it all started as a teenager in school. Around certain friends, he began to drink alcohol and party until it became something he did every day.
Once Elia graduated, he worked hard to support his family. It was this goal that led to his downfall. He was introduced to Adderall, which he used to stay awake and alert through his long days at school and multiple jobs. “That’s what our culture is, we work hard and try to help each other and support one another,” Elia said about the Chaldean community. “I did not realize that I would chase that one high for so long.”
Immediately, he said, he was hooked on the endorphins the drug was releasing in his body. It allowed him to work, go to school, and continue spending time with his friends with minimal sleep. “For a while, nobody noticed what was going on,” he said, addressing one of many difficulties for his parents since they weren’t from the United States.
Elia moved on to more dangerous drugs as a result of his Adderall use. When you’re awake for a long time and constantly dehydrated, he said, you feel pain all over. Elia started taking opiates to address the problem. Before long, he was taking 40-60 pills per day, even while functioning as a normal adult.
“Things started to get out of control soon after that,” Elia said. “The price tag of these substances started to really hurt my pocket. Then I started doing things like stealing or writing bad checks.”
Elia described his experience as doing whatever he could to feel normal, which for him meant using substances. Finally, he started using cheaper drugs, and his life spiraled out of control. He went from being a successful and reliable person who worked hard for his career and his family’s sake to being non-functional.
Substance Use Disorder (SUD), the name for Elia’s condition, is fairly common across the world. Many are susceptible to it if they are exposed to the wrong substances. It’s technically defined by an uncontrolled use of a substance despite the harmful consequences and to the point where the person’s ability to function in day-to-day life is impaired. The substance could be tobacco, alcohol, or any illicit drug.
Dunya Kilano works as the Director of Operations for Families Against Narcotics (FAN), a community-based organization that helps those struggling with substance abuse as well as their families. “FAN seeks to change the face of addiction, dispel the stigma of addiction, and educate the community,” according to its website.
Kilano, who grew up in the metro Detroit Chaldean community and speaks Sureth, has seen firsthand in both her work and her own family the difficulty and damage that SUD can cause for individuals and their families. Her work with FAN assists thousands of people every year with getting help in their journey to conquer SUD.
In 2017, the same year she graduated from Oakland University, according to Kilano, the community experienced a serious increase in overdoses. “A few people in our community lost some of their children,” she said, adding that these families were open about what happened to their loved ones. “That summer, it started to hit our community in a different way.”
What’s different about the Chaldean community? It’s something Kilano thinks about a lot in her work, and she identified both positive and negative aspects.
“In the Chaldean community, we have a lot of protective factors,” she said. “Most of us are lucky to have family in some form who really care about us. It’s a value in our culture, that sense of family.”
This family care can help tremendously in someone’s recovery journey, but for many suffering from substance use disorder, it’s also a challenge to overcome in the beginning, as Chaldeans feel a strong sense of pride in themselves as well as their families and don’t want to let them down by admitting they have a problem. This can also have a positive effect by preventing potential users from ever trying narcotics in the first place.
Kilano contrasts this attitude with the traditionally American values of individualism and independence. “In the Chaldean culture, you represent your family,” she said. “Sometimes, you can’t meet their expectations, and it’s hard to ask for help.”
In her experience, however, whenever someone does go to their family for help, they were loved and supported. FAN has numerous programs to help counsel families, teaching them about substance use disorder and how they can best help their loved one.
In a different way, it can be just as hard on them as on the individual who’s using. “Families can also feel very isolated when they find out a loved one has an issue with substances,” Kilano said. “A lot of times, family members can present with very similar symptoms as the person with addiction. They’re addicted to getting that person better, which can be equally as chaotic.”
Elia can testify from his own experience how difficult it is for families to understand SUD without proper counseling. “My parents were terrified, and they didn’t know what to do,” he said. “We had a lot of sit-down conversations and they tried to detox me at home.”
For about six months, Elia was mostly sober, with members of his family supervising him around the clock. He soon found a way to bypass them and start using again by having people drop things off outside the house. “That’s what substance abuse does to you,” he said. “By any means possible, I’m going to find what I need to feel okay.”
At that point, Elia ran away from home. For the first time, he truly experienced homelessness, albeit by choice, and ended up sleeping mostly on friends’ couches. When he returned home, his family welcomed him back, trying the same strategy as before: 24/7 supervision.
Eventually, his family realized he was lying to them and stealing their jewelry to fund his addiction. This led them to approach the problem with tough love, and they removed Elia from the family home. This was his second experience of homelessness as a result of SUD.
These years of substance use are often a blur for Elia. There are many more parts to his story, including an extremely close overdose, Narcan injection, cardiac arrest and flatline. “They had to bring me back to life,” he said. “Even through that, I was still using.”
Finally, after a brief 7-hour stint at a treatment center, it was Michigan’s weather that brought Elia back to us. “There was a winter storm outside,” he said, “and I had no idea where to turn. I had nowhere to stay. I had burnt every bridge, become so destructive and such a nuisance to be around. I could either freeze and die or call a friend and hope they get me into treatment.”
At this moment, Elia went back to the same center he was in a few months prior, completed the program, and took his recovery very seriously. “You think to yourself, is there a way back from the shame and guilt and all of the chaos I’ve caused in my family’s life? It was like a tornado, the mess I have to clean up,” he said. “How do I deal with these feelings and my poor mother crying every single day.”
Elia believes prayer is what got him out. God heard his family’s prayers, he said, and brought him all the way back to the light. “I found my faith again and got back my relationship with my parents,” he said. “Now that I’ve been through all this, I was able to explain what substance abuse is and how addiction isn’t a choice.”
While Elia’s parents invited him back into their home, he refused the help and decided to go his own way, working and getting his own apartment. Elia went through the whole program, and after one year of sobriety, went to work as a behavioral technician at the center that treated him.
“I supported and helped guide the people who were there seeking recovery,” he said. “I gave them advice from the perspective of someone in recovery. I held small groups and would teach them about addiction and what it does to our body. It’s very powerful when we educate ourselves and offer hope, a light at the end of the tunnel.”
For many narcotics users, getting help is a touchy subject, often because they don’t know where to turn. Going to the police in particular feels daunting when someone is using and in possession of illegal narcotics. Users have a legitimate fear that there will be repercussions if they go to a police station.
Commander Jason Abro works at the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office and was the first Chaldean-American hired there when he began his career in 2001. He shared his perspective on addiction and his desire to see that everyone who needs help gets it.
“Everyone in the community knows someone who’s suffering from some type of substance abuse,” Abro said. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s something to get in front of and prevent.”
Looking back in history, Abro said, families would try to keep things quiet. Now, he suggests being open about the situation with family and friends as well as educating your kids on the issue before any situation arises.
“Sometimes it’s difficult in the Chaldean community because the parents are working long hours,” Abro said. “We always say to look at your kids, their phones, their social media, and who they spend time with. Meet the parents of their friends. Have open communication and talk about things that are right and wrong.”
Police officers themselves are learning and evolving to accommodate new issues in the modern world. Their perspectives, according to Abro, have changed to understand mental health issues in a deeper way. The Macomb County Jail, for example, is building its new Central Intake and Assessment Center, which will focus on addressing the mental health needs of inmates who come through the system.
Abro added that there are plenty of programs for people who come to the police looking for help. Many police and sheriff offices in Michigan are partnered with FAN as a part of their Hope Not Handcuffs program, which provides a good alternative for substance users who want treatment but end up at a police station.
FAN started in 2007 in the basement of a church, according to Kilano. “A few families in Fraser recognized that something was happening in their community and young people were dying,” she said. “It was kind of the peak of the opioid epidemic, when you started to see the overprescribing of opioids and increased access to them in the community.”
Since that fateful meeting, FAN has expanded exponentially. In total the organization has about 60 employees and 70 contractual employees working to help people with SUD. Importantly, FAN serves the entire state of Michigan and can offer treatment options no matter where someone lives.
FAN is funded by the State of Michigan as well as the Federal government through various grant programs.
“There’s a myth and a barrier for some people because they think they don’t have options,” Kilano said, referring to the cost and hassle of going into treatment. “There are treatment options that are free for people with or without insurance. There are ways to get services. There are options for in-patient treatment or others that aren’t so uprooted, depending on someone’s commitment and life situation.”
At the same time as Elia worked at his old treatment center, he also started volunteering for FAN, specifically with the Hope Not Handcuffs program. When someone goes to a police station and asks to get into treatment, they station would call Elia to take care of them, explain their options, and find the right treatment plan.
“People saw I was active and I was offered an opportunity to work in the call center at FAN,” Elia said. “Now, I help coordinate care for people that are looking for treatment or connecting them with other community resources.”
Since it began in 2017, Hope Not Handcuffs has helped connect more than 12,000 active users with treatment. Elia estimates he’s helped many hundreds of people get connected to a treatment plan even in the 3.5 years that he’s been sober. In total, FAN’s call center receives close to 3,000 calls per month, which underscores just how big the issue is.
Elia also noted some important factors about the Chaldean community that helped him in his journey. “I had tremendous family support and prayer,” he said. “They catered to me through this entire journey. I’m very blessed and a lot of people don’t have what I have.”
It wasn’t only Elia’s immediate family who reached out and tried to help him at various points in his journey. His cousins also made an effort to help him. In one particular instance, he remembers feeling annoyed and irritated when his cousin, whom he hadn’t talked with in a while, reached out, but grateful at the same time that someone still wanted to help him.
If Elia could change one thing about how the community looks at SUD, it would be to eliminate secrecy and shame surrounding the disorder. “Talk about it, seek advice, and know that there are resources. Please reach out for help,” he said. “To the families, be supportive for that loved one who’s struggling. Be supportive in the best way you know how to and try not to look at it through an angry lens.”