Hope Dealers Peddling Recovery From Addiction Met Saturday At City Park

By Tim Arnett

WABASH,Indiana – The 30 or so people who attended the Utopian Oasis Candlelight Vigil Saturday night greeted each other like family at the upper-level pavilion in the Wabash City Park. This is despite the fact that quite a few of the attendees had never met each other. In fact, the evening felt more like a family reunion than a service to remember those lost to drug abuse and to celebrate those who have come out the other side of addiction into recovery.

Rev. Michael Moore

Reverend Michael Moore, Assistant and Youth Pastor of Wabash Chapel Church of God, gave a brief introduction and then several musical numbers were performed. Five recovering addicts also spoke. Many spoke about relapsing after years of sobriety and others spoke on how their parents or brother and sisters were – or are still – addicts. Hearing their stories, one realizes the daily struggle some addicts face when it comes to using again, especially when they have a particularly bad day or when there is a tragedy in their lives.

Kitt Bettencourt

Another theme MiBash News heard several times is the notion that recovering addicts help other addicts. That is clearly what drives Utopian Oasis Founder Kitt Bettencourt. A recovering addict herself, Bettencourt told the crowd assembled of the latest of the 140 people she has helped into recovery this year alone. Just recently, a woman from Marion showed up on her door, begging for help. Bettencourt said that she spent four days helping the woman detox before her and her team found a treatment facility for her to go to.

Tim Wells, who brought up seven people from Kokomo, on why he attended the vigil Saturday evening.

Wells added that he would like to organize a group like Utopian Oasis in Kokomo, which, he says, has a huge drug problem like everywhere else in the area. Doug Bolton, one of the filmmakers of the upcoming documentary called “Wabash: City On High,” told MiBash News that the six or seven interviews have been done on the film so far – some as long as 90 minutes. Bolton gives us an update on the documentary.

Tina Easterday, mother of the late Heather Griffin who passed away from an overdose in January of 2015, was in attendance at the vigil. She describes the loss of her daughter early last year.

The evening ended that the lighting of candles in remembrance and the releasing of black and white balloons. Black for those lost and the white for the peace and serenity of their loved ones still on Earth.