The Council’s Speakers Series Luncheons 2000-2018 – A Galaxy of Stars

Composite Image 2
The Council’s Fall & Spring Luncheon Speakers 2000-2018 [Click for larger images]
The Council on Recovery’s 2018 Fall Luncheon with Alice Cooper was the 36th Luncheon  in the The Waggoners Foundation Speaker Series. Since 2000, the Waggoners Foundation along with, more recently, the Wayne Duddlesten Foundation, have underwritten the production of a Spring and Fall Luncheons. These luncheons have raised millions of dollars over the past 18 years. The Luncheon have been headlined by some of the biggest celebrities of their era, each of whom has entertained and inspired thousands with their recovery stories.

On The Council’s website, we proudly present the complete Galaxy of Stars who have helped us raise awareness and funds over the years. View the list here and enjoy the reminiscence!

Rock Legend Alice Cooper Helps The Council on Recovery Raise $495K to Fund Addiction Prevention, Education, & Treatment Programs

D7S 4414
Rock legend Alice Cooper shares his story at the Fall Luncheon

Alice Cooper, the Godfather of Shock-Rock and Rock & Roll Hall-of-Famer thrilled an audience of more than 1100 with his personal story of recovery from alcoholism and  addiction this past Thursday at the Hilton Americas-Houston. In the process, he helped The Council on Recovery raise more than $495,000 to provide addiction prevention, education, and treatment services in the Greater Houston area.

The total funds raised are expected to rise after on-site green card donations are tabulated.

D7S 4388
Alice Cooper in conversation with KPRC’s Frank Billingsly

Alice was the keynote speaker at the 36th Annual Fall Luncheon in The Waggoners Foundation Speaker Series presented by the Wayne Duddlesten Foundation.

The Luncheon was chaired by Council board members Dennis Robinson

D7S 4314
Luncheon Co-Chair Dennis Robinson

and Tony Valadez, each of whom related their own personal experience with recovery

D7S 4324
Luncheon Co-Chair Tony Valadez

[Read Dennis’ story; read Tony’s story].

With preceding remarks from The Council’s President/CEO, Mel Taylor and Board of Trustees Chairman Bob Newhouse, a heartfelt introduction by Jerri Duddlesten-Moore brought Alice Cooper to the stage.

D7S 4363
Jerri Duddlesten-Moore introduces Alice

In an intimate interview conducted by KPRC/Channel 2’s Frank Billingsly, Alice opened up about his illustrious career in rock & roll that spanned the last fifty years. Like many rockers of the late 60’s and early 70’s, Alice’s trajectory into stardom was initially fueled by drugs and alcohol.D7S 4437

“I was never a drunk ‘drunk’, but I never got sober,” Cooper said. “I used to like to drink, but then I got to the point where I hated it.”

In his late twenties, after performing his “Welcome to My Nightmare” show in 65 cities over 72 days, exhaustion and drinking had finally taken their toll.D7S 4444

“I got up and threw up blood, that’s probably a bad sign,” Cooper said. “My wife [Sheryl], we’ve been married 43 years…, she’s the one who said, ‘Hey, superstar, party’s over.’ I was hospitalized…in 1977…for about three months.”

Asked about that experience, Cooper said, “The crazy thing about my sobriety was…no one is ever a cured alcoholic, but I’m a healed alcoholic. I came out of the hospital and I was the classic alcoholic. I went right to a bar, sat down with a Coca Col,a and waited for the craving to come. And it didn’t come…it never came. Thirty-five years later and it never came. Even the doctors said it was a biblical miracle.”D7S 4431

Cooper did use cocaine after he stopped drinking, but quit after a couple of years. He recalled, “I had enough of that and said ‘that’s it’ and, boom, it was done. There was nothing else, I was done.”

Sober more than 35 years, Alice Cooper admits to doing it without a twelve-step program. Speaking of two fellow rock stars, Joe P. and Steven T., Cooper said, “Now, there are two guys…who went through very heavy drug and alcohol [use]… and they are in AA every day. I applaud them for doing that, too, because it means that much to them…two guys that probably should have been dead in the early 70’s are still making records and still out there doing it.”D7S 4381

Relating his role as a sober rock star and the new generation of younger fans, Cooper reminisced about Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, and Janis Joplin who were brilliant in their field, but never stopped using and all died at 27. “Kids [today] look at us that got sober and they’re smart enough to go ‘ah’, that’s what I’m looking at. It’s not that cool to be high anymore,” Cooper said. “In my lyrics in my songs you’re going to find a lot of warning about drugs and alcohol…some people pick up on it which is good. People [tell me], ‘that one song saved my life’. A simple song can affect somebody enough that they don’t either commit suicide or they get the picture that drugs or alcohol are gonna kill you.”

When asked what he would say to people who are on-the-fence about having a problem with drugs or alcohol, Cooper said, “When you face that realization, and want to go on, you have to face that problem. It took me getting sick before I got control of it. If you think you’re an alcoholic, go two weeks without it and see if it’s part of your body, if it’s an everyday thing.”

Alice Cooper recently finished 190 shows in 17 countries on five continents. “I’m the only one not breathing hard,” Cooper quipped, “and I play golf six days a week [with a 4-handicap].”

D7S 4453Cooper is well-known for helping to support other musicians who struggle with addiction, and has even opened a nonprofit program, Solid Rock, dedicated to helping vulnerable teenagers make healthy choices.

Check our Blog in comings days for additional Luncheon photos!

Video Links:

Senator John Cornyn Visits The Council to Host Roundtable Discussion on Opioid Addiction in Houston

DSC 7587
Council CEO Mel Taylor welcomes Senator and Mrs. John Cornyn to The Council on Recovery
IMG 4246
Senator Cornyn leads roundtable discussion

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) visited The Council on Recovery on October 30th to host a roundtable discussion on opioid addiction in Houston. The discussion came a week after the President signed into law legislation that was originally introduced by Cornyn and U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA). The new law, called the Substance Abuse Prevention Act, will help local groups in Houston combat substance abuse.

Participating in the roundtable were representatives from The Council on Recovery; Addiction Policy Forum; the Success Through Addiction Recovery (STAR) Drug Court Program; Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA); both the Fort Bend Community and Southeast Harris Prevention Coalitions; and law enforcement leaders from Houston, Galveston, Harris County, Victoria County, and Fort Bend County.

IMG 4261
CEO Taylor describes The Council’s efforts to treat addiction

The discussion focused efforts to fight Southeast Texas’ illegal drug supply, divert those with substance abuse problems to treatment and recovery programs, and work with local communities to prevent illegal drug use.

The group was also given a demonstration of how to use a Naloxone overdose kit to revive an opioid overdose victim. During the meeting, more than 100 overdose kits were distributed to law enforcement officials attending the roundtable.

IMG 42951
CEO Taylor addresses media questions

The Substance Abuse Prevention Act, part of the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, reauthorizes critical programs to reduce demand for narcotics, provides assistance to law enforcement and service providers so they can better combat opioid addiction, and supports those recovering from substance use disorders.

The Council on Recovery is Houston’s oldest and largest non-profit provider of prevention, education, treatment, and recovery services for individuals and their families affected by substance use disorders. The Council and its Center for Recovering Families are tirelessly at work battling opioid epidemic on a daily basis. If you or a loved one needs help, call The Council at (713) 942-4100 or contact us online.

National Prescription Drug Take Back Day Takes Place Oct. 27, 10A – 2P

Don't Be a DealerSemi-Annual event provides safe, convenient, and responsible way to dispose of prescription drugs

The Drug Enforcement Administration is hosting the semi-annual National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on Saturday, Oct. 27. The goal of the event is to provide a safe, convenient, and responsible means of disposing of prescription drugs, while also educating the general public about the potential for abuse of medications.  For a list of local drug collection sites, click here.

The Council on Recovery urges you to check your medicine cabinets, drawers, purses, and glove boxes for unused and/or expired Rx prescriptions. Dispose of them safely and immediately. Drug Take Back day is an ideal time to assure that dangerous, addictive, and potentially deadly prescriptions do not fall into the wrong hands.

If you or a loved one is experiencing a problem with Rx drugs, alcohol, or other addictive behaviors, contact The Council. We can help!

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 40

In the parlance of long-running, multi-season TV shows, the term “jump the shark” denotes that point at which the series popularity begins to decline.  It usually cites a particular show in which the characters in the show do something a bit absurd, maybe so much beyond the mythos of the show that it begins to destroy that mythos and, maybe, the TV audience’s love affair with the themes and the characters.  Jumping the Shark

The term got its name, “jump the shark” from the 1970’s TV series “Happy Days,” about a mid-western family and their friends.  Happy Days “jumped the shark,” began to decline in popularity, when one of the characters, Arthur Fonzarelli, aka, Fonzie or The Fonz, in an episode in the later stretch of the series run, pulled off an outlandish water-skiing stunt by jumping a shark pit.

This idea has been linked to virtually all multi-season shows, as well as some other situations, in a 2002 book of the same name by Jon Hein, a magazine writer of some renown.  Hein analyzes nearly 300 TV shows, sports organizations, music groups, celebrities and political careers in the same vein.  This type event seems to be signaling a major inflection point in the history of organizations, events and people and it occurs to me that we could look at our own lives in addiction in just the same way.  We could see such an event, first, as that event in our drinking history when our behavior was so bad, when an event of absolute insanity occurred, in front of a large gathering of our family, friends, and communities, that it absolutely confirmed our descent into insanity in the larger cosmos. For this alcoholic, it happened at the end of a Texas high school football championship game when, before 20,000 people (family, friends, business acquaintances, and just people) in the Astrodome, I took off across an empty field chasing the referee to complain of a bad call that cost us the game.

Or, from a different perspective, it could be that point at which, in our efforts to recovery, we finally got it, when we finally grasped the idea of “doing what it takes.”  Stopping the drinking and using, going to meetings, working the steps, listening intently to our Fellows, it occurs to us one day, almost out of the blue, that we could do this.  That the scourge of alcohol and drugs and debilitating behaviors was being lifted.

We had to, we have to keep working the program, but the realization that recovery had begun, in earnest, was truly at hand.  What a great day…

Senate Passes Broad Opioid Package to Address National Crisis

Senate passes opioid package

The Council on Recovery applauds the U.S. Senate’s passage of the final version of a sweeping opioids package Wednesday. Passed with rare bipartisan support by a vote of 98-1, the bill will be sent it to the White House for expected signature.

The bill represents Congressional response to the opioid epidemic, a growing public health crisis that resulted in 72,000 drug-overdose deaths last year. The House of Representatives passed the bill last week. It combines dozens of smaller proposals, from both sides of the aisle, that affect every federal agency. The bill is aimed at addressing different aspects of the opioid crisis, including prevention, treatment and recovery.

Major Provisions

Among major provisions, the legislation creates a grant program for comprehensive recovery centers that include housing and job training, as well as mental and physical health care. It also increases access to medication-assisted treatment to help people with substance abuse disorders safely detox from the opioids.

Another portion of the bill changes a prohibition that limited Medicaid from covering patients with substance abuse disorders who were receiving treatment in a mental health facility with more than 16 beds. The bill lifts that rule to allow for 30 days of residential treatment coverage.

The bill also gives Medicare beneficiaries more information on alternative pain treatments, and expands treatment options for enrollees who are addicted to opioids.

Funding in the Bill

Congress has appropriated $8.5 billion this year for opioid-related programs, but has not guaranteed funding for subsequent years. Some members of Congress have proposed committing at least $100 billion over ten years to fight the opioid epidemic.

The Council on Recovery

The Council on Recovery is in the vanguard of local efforts to stem the opioid epidemic with a broad array of prevention, education, treatment, and recovery programs. The Council also recently hosted the 2018 Houston Opioid Summit. For more information about our services, contact us today.