Blessings Treatment

The city of Antioch is the second-largest city in the county of Contra Costa and is situated along the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Contra Costa County has been heavily impacted by opiate addiction and misuse. This is why it is so important to have adequate drug treatment programs in Antioch. Per a 2019 Contra Costa Fact Sheet regarding opioid use and treatment, there were 81 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2019, which was a rate of 8.2 per 100,000. Medication-assisted treatment is utilized throughout the county and within the city of Antioch, and in 2019 there were over 25,000 buprenorphine prescriptions handed out. Within the county are four opioid treatment programs, and over 5,000 residents receive buprenorphine treatment with behavioral counseling for opioid addiction. According to a 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment put together by the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Antioch, behavioral health including treatment for substance abuse is one of the needs the surrounding community expressed concern for. Many within the Antioch community-identified trauma and adverse childhood experiences as drivers for substance abuse. Economic security was also a concern, and the stress from living day to day does cause people to turn to drugs or alcohol as a solution. The high cost of living within the area does contribute to the high levels of enrollment in government assistance programs, such as food stamps, Medicaid, and public insurance. Many community members who have a lower income struggle to access the care they need and cite the stress of economic instability as a problem. Anyone struggling with addiction should reach out for help from one of the various substance abuse treatment programs in Antioch. Marcel Gemme has been helping people struggling with addiction for over 19 years. He first started as an intake counselor for a drug rehabilitation center in 2000. During his 5 years as an intake counselor, he helped many addicts get the treatment they needed. He also dealt with the families and friends of those people; he saw first-hand how much strain addiction puts on a family and how it can tear relationships apart. With drug and alcohol problems constantly on the rise in the United States and Canada, he decided to use the Internet as a way to educate and help many more people in both those countries. This was 15 years ago. Since then, Marcel has built two of the largest websites in the U.S. and Canada which reach and help millions of people each year. He is an author and a leader in the field of drug and alcohol addiction. His main focus is threefold: education, prevention and rehabilitation. To this day, he still strives to be at the forefront of technology in order to help more and more people. He is a Licensed Drug and Alcohol Treatment Specialist graduate with Honours of Stratford Career Institute. Marcel has also received a certificate from Harvard for completing a course entitled The Opioid Crisis in America and a certificate from The University of Adelaide for completing a course entitled AddictionX: Managing Addiction: A Framework for Succesful Treatment.