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Recovery in the News
LI Rock N' Recovery 'sober dance' for recovering addicts
Michael Amon
Newsday.com
October 11, 2009
Angela Martinez had forgotten it was even possible to dance sober.
But there she was Saturday night, sweating and swaying to salsa music, euphoric without the aid of anything stronger than a bottle of water.
"It's like I have to relearn how to dance when I'm sober, just like you relearn how to do everything else," said Martinez, 22, of Centereach, who lives in the C.K. Post halfway house in Brentwood, recovering from an addiction to heroin.
Martinez and nearly 200 others recovering from drug and alcohol addictions partied sober at the Rock N' Recovery dance Saturday night, organized by the Long Island Recovery Association and other advocates for addiction services for National Recovery Month.
The recovery association has held educational and networking events for Recovery Month, but this year organizers said they decided on a dance to recognize the growing number of young people on Long Island in the early stages of recovery from heroin and opiate addictions.
"It's a chance to let loose a bit," said Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Addiction and Drug Dependence. "After treatment, you can't tell kids, 'You can't go out, you can't dance.' "
The result was the basketball court of the Deer Park Community Center was transformed into something like a nightclub, with a spinning disco ball, pounding music and young people in tight clothes.
It wasn't long before the dance floor was packed.
"These kids need to dance hard, they need to sweat hard, they need to have fun while they're in recovery," said Deborah Arch-Bennett, 53, a single mother in her fifth year of recovery. During a brief break in the dancing she received a $500 scholarship to continue her training as a substance abuse counselor.
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Much of the crowd appeared to be under 30, but there were also many with decades of sobriety like Maxine McKenzie Materowski, 54, of Bellmore. She said the event reminded her of sober clubs - like regular nightclubs but without the alcohol and surreptitious drug use common in club culture - that used to exist in New York City and Long Island but have all closed in the past 20 years.
The Long Island Recovery Association wants to open a recovery center that could be used in part as a sober social venue, but its application for a federal grant was turned down this year, said association president Richard Buckman.
"This was a great success," Buckman said of the dance. "We're going to need a bigger room next time."
Dinesh Singh, 26, of Brooklyn, who marked his 90th day without a drink Sunday at C.K. Post, danced for almost four hours Saturday night. It was easier than he thought.
"I love being sober," Singh said. "I don't ever want to give this up."
Copyright © 2009 Newsday.