A tribe in Maine is using opioid settlement funds on a sweat lodge to treat addiction

[babylonsister]

A tribe in Maine is using opioid settlement funds on a sweat lodge to treat addiction
May 12, 20247:01 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
From
KFF Health News
By Aneri Pattani
The Mi'kmaq Nation in Maine spent about $50,000 of its opioid settlement funds to build a healing lodge it will use for traditional sweat ceremonies to help people recover from addiction.
Aneri Pattani/KFF Health News


PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Outside the Mi'kmaq Nation's health department sits a dome-shaped tent, built by hand from saplings and covered in black canvas. It's one of several sweat lodges on the tribe's land, but this one is dedicated to helping people recover from addiction.

Up to 10 people enter the lodge at once. Fire-heated stones — called grandmothers and grandfathers, for the spirits they represent — are brought inside. Water is splashed on the stones, and the lodge fills with steam. It feels like a sauna, but hotter. The air is thicker, and it's dark. People pray and sing songs. When they leave the lodge, it is said, they reemerge from the mother's womb. Cleansed. Reborn.

The experience can be "a vital tool" in healing, said Katie Espling, health director for the roughly 2,000-member tribe.

She said patients in recovery have requested sweat lodges for years as a cultural element to complement the counseling and medications the tribe's health department already provides. But insurance doesn't cover sweat ceremonies, so, until now, the department couldn't afford to provide them.

In the past year, the Mi'kmaq Nation received more than $150,000 from settlements with companies that made or sold prescription painkillers and were accused of exacerbating the overdose crisis. A third of that money was spent on the sweat lodge.

more...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/12/1250379089/sweat-lodge-traditional-healing-addiction-recovery-opioid-settlement-funds

[Elessar Zappa]

1. Whatever works!

[Prairie_Seagull]

2. Done a couple of 'sweats'.

Found them to be, among other things, cleansing both physically and emotionally.

I can see sweats being a useful tool in the bag of a shaman or a doctor.

In my trained only by life opinion.

[keithbvadu2]

3. The idea is fine but $50,000 for that small structure?

Who built it?
Haliburton on a gov't contract?

[Brother Buzz]

5. In my opinion, everyone would be best served by investing a little 'sweat equity' into the project

and building it themselves; it's not rocket surgery. Mother nature provided everything they need for free if they take a look-see.

[niyad]

20. Wow. That is not the sort of response I expect to see on a progressive

board. The condescension of, "Mother Nature provided it all", with the implication that, if they just were not so lazy. . .

Do you think the workers should have done the construction for free? Do you think the use of whatever equipment was necessary to get all of Mother Nature's bounty there should have been donated (since I am fairly certain Mother Nature did not just happen to leave all the saplings, riocks, etc. just handily stacked next to the chosen spot). Have you ever constructed a sweat lodge?

And, as it is THEIR money, not taxpayer money, really??? Do they need to account to us as to how they spend THEIR money?

I am appalled and ashamed to see such thinking expressed on DU.

[Brother Buzz]

22. In my perfect world the sweat lodge would have already been built before the settlement

The patients in recovery have requested sweat lodges for years, but they only acted when the money splashed.

Why?

[niyad]

23. Nice deflection from answering the questions, but keep trying.

[chowder66]

12. I think it has to do with insurance.

"She said patients in recovery have requested sweat lodges for years as a cultural element to complement the counseling and medications the tribe's health department already provides. But insurance doesn't cover sweat ceremonies, so, until now, the department couldn't afford to provide them."

[niyad]

21. See post 20.

[mopinko]

4. imho, it's the talk, not the steam.

it’s a great form of therapy.
i read once that when warriors came home from battle, they’d sit w the mothers of the tribe, and tell their stories until no one was crying. sounds like an effective way to prevent ptsd.

[chowder66]

6. What a cool idea.

[mopinko]

8. ikr?

imagine the mother of the man who died to save u forgiving u.

[chowder66]

10. Just purging it alone would have great effect I would think.

I imagine coping skills would also be picked up as people share and mothers advise.

[mopinko]

11. from what i know, that's what trauma centered therapy is.

[malaise]

7. Rec

Hope it helps

[calimary]

9. Sometimes the old wisdom is valuable wisdom for a new age.

[Deuxcents]

14. I agree. Our Native Tribes have remedies and procedures

We should be open minded about. Western medicine could be used in coordination with traditional ways if the patient requires/requests it.

[calimary]

17. TOTALLY agreed.

And one has to remember: these tribes have survived WAY longer than the "white man" by honoring the Earth and living in harmony with nature. Seems to me we could ALL take a lesson, even in this day and age.

[sagetea]

13. It works too

I've lead some that were for that reason specifically.


sage

[RainCaster]

15. I think this is a wonderful idea

Who are we to say that our ideas are the best? I have many tribal friends in my AA group, so I'm well aware of the addictions in that community.

[niyad]

16. Excellent! We talked about creating them on local military bases

after Gulf 1 and after 9/11, but I don't know if it ever happened.

We need every healing modality we can find.

[Warpy]

18. It's not just the sweat, although that puts people in a different head space

it's also the cultural framework around it. Around here, the tribes are reporting success in using their peyote ceremonies to treat substance abuse, especially in combination with a modified AA program.

Similar success has been reported by people using ayahuasca and psilocybin.

Whatever works. Things are getting scary out there. They've even found fentanyl in cocaine.

[AllaN01Bear]

19. ""