Charles Co. Farm and Residents Featured in Upcoming MPT Documentary on Opioid Addiction and Recovery

Program includes segment featuring Farming 4 Hunger on Benedict farm

OWINGS MILLS, Md. (Jan. 26, 2017)—Maryland Public Television (MPT) will premiere a new program, Breaking Heroin's Grip: Road to Recovery, on Saturday, February 11 at 7 p.m. The one-hour television event, consists of a 40-minute documentary and 20-minute live phone bank program. The program also will air, on a delay, on WPTX/1690 AM in Lexington Park.

Produced by MPT in association with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's Behavioral Health Administration, Breaking Heroin's Grip: Road to Recovery examines stories of three Maryland residents in rural and urban settings with an opioid use disorder. Rather than focusing on the criminal and legal aspects of the users' stories, the MPT program instead concentrates on the subjects' individual struggles and recovery from addiction.

Serenity Farm in Charles County is the setting for one of the documentary's three featured stories. During the segment, viewers will meet Lauren Fowler and her father, Bernie Fowler, Jr., who lost nearly everything in 2008 recession, including his business and his marriage. Compounding his problems, he lost his daughter to heroin addiction. To help his economically hard-hit community, he then partnered with Serenity Farm to establish the nonprofit organization Farming 4 Hunger to produce fruits and vegetables for area food banks. Farming 4 Hunger now donates two million pounds of fresh food each year to needy southern Maryland families.

Seeking volunteers to work the farm, Fowler reached out to churches and schools and eventually a local correctional facility to recruit pre-release prisoners. As the heroin epidemic in southern Maryland grew to claim more than a hundred young lives in four years—and nearly his daughter Lauren—he realized that the farm could do more than feed people; it could inspire young people to make positive life choices.

Over several years the success of Fowler's program has inspired other rural communities to fight the drug epidemic through education and community engagement. His daughter has recovered and is now telling others her story, which includes meeting her former drug dealer who was one of the convicts sent to work at the farm.

Breaking Heroin's Grip: Road to Recovery also will be streamed on a special website, breakingheroin.com, created to provide public access to information, the state's crisis hotline, and resources to assist active users and their families in obtaining help. The website will offer two more video segments not included in the broadcast featuring firsthand accounts of the region's heroin problem. Following the broadcast, the documentary also will be available on the same website and MPT's YouTube channel.

Throughout the evening and at the documentary's conclusion, a live phone bank (1-800-422-0009)—staffed by Behavioral Health Administration crisis hotline team members—will receive calls from addicted individuals, family members, or friends to provide immediate information and assistance that may lead to treatment and recovery.

Individuals who need help finding resources for substance related disorder treatment also can visit MdDestinationRecovery.org. Treatment facilities, listed by location and program characteristics, can be found at this link.

MPT news anchor Jeff Salkin will be joined by WBAL-TV news anchor/reporter Jason Newton, to host the one-hour telecast and phone bank outreach event.

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