Anti-drug group holds community cookout, meeting
Robbinsville – A Graham County group hoping to do its part to curtail the area’s growing drug problem held an community-wide cookout on Saturday.
The Rescue Coalition – a grassroots anti-drug group that has become active in the past month – held a cookout in the parking lot between McDonald’s and Family Dollar in Robbinsville. The event featured speakers, free hot dogs, music and a sermon from Kevin Seagle.
Information from Celebrate Recovery and other local addiction treatment resources was also available.
“Our hope is to reach the addicts and the homeless who need a meal,” said Natasha Phillips McFadden, one of the group’s founders. “That was our goal, to provide that today, to raise awareness of who we are and what we’re doing, and that is who we are and what we’re doing.”
She said that the event also served to help get the word out about the new group and its mission out into the community.
Fadden noted the group had officially been in existence for three weeks and had just sent their paperwork to become an official nonprofit to the secretary of state’s office in Raleigh.
“There are other groups that are kind of alongside of us that are taking care of more of the issues in the community and far as justice,” McFadden said.”We are just trying to bring what’s already here together.”
She also said she hoped the group would fill in the gaps where the other entities couldn’t and help provide manpower in the fight against the area’s drug problem. So far, the group has attended a Graham County Board of Commissioners meeting en masse and has held a kickoff rally in the Robbinsville High School gymnasium.
“Although we might not get the addicts here tonight, they’re going to hear about this,” McFadden said.
In a speech given later in the evening, McFadden referred to her brother’s death from an overdose in March at the age of 30.
“I can’t even think about talking about it,” she said. “It just breaks my heart.”
Marie Buchanan also shared her own story of recovery from a bout with addiction to prescription pills through the Celebrate Recovery program and the efforts of medical and mental health professionals.
“You let a lot of people down,” Buchanan said. “I let my children down. I let my family down, people in the community that love me. I let everybody down and you have to take responsibility for that.”