BREWSTER – Joanne Wisniewski, president of Pause A While, Inc., and vice president Paul Dart spoke prior to the nonprofit’s open house last Friday at 250 Underpass Rd. to learn how the pandemic impacted delivery of vital support services. The facility serves as a location for a variety of recovery meetings and other services for residents from throughout the Lower and Outer Cape. For meeting schedules, visit www...

BREWSTER – After a two-year search, Pause A While, Inc. purchased a permanent home for the organization in November, and after months of renovations, the facility is up and running. The opening will be celebrated on Friday, March 31 at 2:30 p.m. at the new building at 250 Underpass Rd. Those who helped make the building possible will be thanked, including Lori Meads, president and CEO of Seamen’s Bank, Robert ...

To Benefit Program To Help Teens Recovering From Substance Abuse CHATHAM – For Bob Wirtshafter, a winter dip in the ocean or a local pond is no big deal. As of Sunday, he'd done it 70 times since November. And each time has an important purpose. Wirtshafter's cold-water plunges helps raise money for RecoveryBuild, an alternative peer group program for teenagers struggling with substance abuse. For each o...

HARWICH – A town staff working group has crafted a substance abuse prevention plan tapping the state’s Opioid Recovery and Remediation Fund to educate the youth of the community to the hazards of drug use and to provide outpatient and inpatient programs for those in need. The working group made a presentation to selectmen last week and the board was scheduled to approve the proposal at its Feb. 21 meeting. Fun...

Massachusetts cities and towns will share 40 percent of the half a billion dollars the state received from the $26 billion federal opioid settlement. According to state guidelines, the money must be spent on prevention, harm reduction, recovery and treatment programs related to opioid abuse. Officials from the Barnstable County Department of Human Services are urging local towns to form substance abuse committ...

HARWICH – More than a dozen people took to the cold waters at Bank Street Beach last Thursday to honor a woman lost to the opioid drug epidemic over a decade ago and to raise funds for Recoverybuild, a new alternative peer group counseling center for teens. The Winter Dip is a fundraising event held across the Cape for Recoverybuild, which has mentoring centers in Falmouth and Harwich in partnership with the D...

High school students experiencing mental health issues and substance use disorders often end up suspended from school as part of the school’s disciplinary process. But a different approach calls for targeted intervention for those students, rather than just sending them home. South Chatham-based Behavioral Health Innovators, Inc. (BHI) is the recipient of a $101,000 grant from the New York-based Peter and Eliza...

HARWICH — Students at Monomoy Regional High School are being offered access to a unique program designed to help them understand and avoid addiction, thanks to a $1,500 grant from the Cape Cod Foundation’s Harwich Fund and Chatham Fund. To be offered by Behavioral Health Innovators, the program is a one-of-a-kind speaker series that teaches students about the teenage brain and the biology of addiction, the p...

CHATHAM — Like adults, teens who are fighting addiction have access to rehabilitation programs, but when they emerge, they often fall back in with the same peers who introduced them to drugs. The nonprofit group RecoveryBuild is helping with its new “alternative peer group,” connecting teens in recovery with others who have been down the same road. Harwich Youth Counselor Sheila House recently gave a presentat...

CHATHAM — Treading lightly over what they admit is a complicated issue, selectmen Tuesday opened a dialogue about the proliferation of single-serve “nip” bottles of alcohol. The 15-milliliter bottles litter area roadways, and the problem has led other towns – including Harwich – to consider banning their sale. Nip bans are already in place on the Upper Cape, Selectman Jeffrey Dykens noted. When he walks Route ...

When an approach to a challenge works, people tend to stick with it. When two different approaches to related challenges work, sometimes they create a harmony that enhances or even surpasses the benefit of either one alone. Such is the case with Yoga of 12-Step Recovery, also known as Y12SR, a donation-based program that offers 12-step recovery meetings combined with yoga. In combination, yoga and 12-step reco...

HARWICH – The Harwich Police Department has a new member, and he’s here to teach kids in the Monomoy School District not to vape. If he gets a few treats in the process, that’s all the better. Fritz isn’t your average member of the force. Unlike his bipedal fellow officers, Fritz is an 18-month-old German shorthaired pointer and it’s his job, quite literally, to sniff out e-cigarettes and vaporizers on school ...

HARWICH — As the town and state prepare more restrictive regulations governing the sale of tobacco products, a new smoke shop has opened in Harwich Center. New state regulations went into effect on Dec. 11 and the town’s new board of health regulations went into effect on September. Additional provisions will be effective Jan. 1 prohibiting retail stores with tobacco licenses from selling flavored tobacco prod...

CHATHAM – Taking action ahead of a new state law set to go into effect June 1, the board of health last week approved regulations banning the retail sale of all flavored tobacco products in town. Last summer the board banned flavored tobacco sales in regular retail stores, but allowed the sales in adult-only smoke shops. The latest revision of the town's tobacco control regulations, slated to go into effect Ja...

HARWICH – A handful of Monomoy Regional School District parents got a crash course in vaping on Oct. 16, when Kim Slade, a substance abuse prevention manager and vaping expert with the Barnstable County Department of Human Services, offered information on teen vaping that sent any defense of vaporizer use up in smoke. “From 2017 to 2019 we've seen a 135 percent increase in students vaping,” Slade told parents ...

HARWICH — When it comes to controlling vaping, smoking or other nicotine use among students, Monomoy High School has traditionally had an old-school approach, issuing multiple-day suspensions when kids violate the rules. “We’re rethinking that,” Assistant Principal Janie Girolamo told the school committee recently. “It really doesn’t serve any purpose” to have violators miss out on their classes and miss out...