Head of New York’s HUGS gives keynote at addiction conference
BUTLER TWP — Kym Laube, executive director of the New York-based addiction recovery agency HUGS, delivered the afternoon keynote speech at the sixth annual summer conference on opioid addiction at Butler County Community College’s main campus on Tuesday, Aug. 8.
Laube initially was scheduled to deliver her speech in the morning, followed by a breakout session later that day. However, the schedule of the conference changed when Laube’s flight from LaGuardia Airport was delayed.
The keynote speech concluded day one of the conference, a two-day event dedicated to addressing the opioid epidemic in Butler County and elsewhere.
Laube spoke from experience, as she dealt with her own struggles with alcoholism while growing up on Long Island. These were so dire at one stage that Laube’s mother filed a “person in need of supervision” petition, essentially putting her under probation and forcing her to perform hundreds of hours of community service.
“It wasn’t the kind of community service that I could put on my college application,” Laube said. “It was the kind of community service where if I don’t do it, I’m going to juvenile hall.”
It was through this community service that Laube gained her first experience working with HUGS — first as a student volunteer, starting in 1986, then rising all the way up to executive director in 2002.
Laube’s speech was aimed mainly at caregivers experiencing burnout as a result of the last few years of negative events, especially COVID-19, which she described as causing the “great relapse.”
Statistics show that the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in deaths by suicide, as well as the consumption of alcohol and illicit drugs. In the first year of the pandemic, alcohol use nationwide increased 14% overall; alcohol consumption among women increased by 41%. Meanwhile, an estimated 107,622 people died of drug overdoses in the United States alone in 2021 — a jump of nearly 50% from 2019.
Naturally, the three and a half years of shared suffering could lead to “compassion fatigue,” when caregivers take on extreme levels of stress and trauma and eventually lose empathy for their patients.
“As compassion fatigue builds and we become depleted, it becomes harder and harder to figure out what makes us happy anymore,” Laube said.
When Laube asked those in attendance to raise their hands if they felt burned out or fatigued, nearly all in attendance did so.
The latter part of the keynote address encouraged caregivers to find ways to regain their composure during their darkest moments. These include finding a new exercise regimen to unwind after a tough day at work, keeping a daily journal, or finding beauty in the simple things in life such as a sunrise.
“You can't live in self-care all day long,” Laube said, “but what you can do is learn to take a couple of breaths and go back into the fire.”
