2006.08.06: August 6, 2006: Headlines: COS - Nigeria: Mental Health: Drugs: Big Bear Grizzly: Nigeria RPCV Bert Meltzer is executive director of Operation Breakthrough drug and alcohol treatment facility in Big Bear California
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2006.08.06: August 6, 2006: Headlines: COS - Nigeria: Mental Health: Drugs: Big Bear Grizzly: Nigeria RPCV Bert Meltzer is executive director of Operation Breakthrough drug and alcohol treatment facility in Big Bear California
Nigeria RPCV Bert Meltzer is executive director of Operation Breakthrough drug and alcohol treatment facility in Big Bear California
Meltzer's own battle is the war on drugs. He brings a fresh and unique view to substance abuse due to his extended time living outside the country, he said. “In America there is a pill for everything. A pill to make you be like your image of yourself,” Meltzer said. Americans take pills to cover up what the real problems are, Meltzer said. Substance abuse as a whole is ingrained into the culture, he said. The world traveler has found a new home, a place with quiet and peace.
Nigeria RPCV Bert Meltzer is executive director of Operation Breakthrough drug and alcohol treatment facility in Big Bear California
From the West Bank to the West Coast
By BRIAN CHARLES
The clap of thunder is about the loudest thing you hear around Big Bear. For many new residents the sound of silence can be deafening. Bert Meltzer is not one of them. Meltzer's last address was a farm in Israel.
Meltzer's story has taken him from the hardscrabble streets of Brooklyn, to the plains of Africa, all the way to a kibbutz in Israel and eventually to Big Bear. He is the new executive director of Operation Breakthrough drug and alcohol treatment facility in Big Bear.
In December 2005, during one of his frequent trips to the United States, Meltzer visited his brother who lives in Big Bear. Needing a break, he submitted his resume for the position of executive director of Operation Breakthrough after his brother told him of the job opening. Meltzer was offered the job and moved half way around the world again landing in Big Bear Feb. 27.
With him Meltzer brings a wealth of knowledge on mental health. The man who often thinks outside the box developed a therapy technique that is in a box literally.
Sandplay is a technique that allows trauma victims to communicate by setting up scenes with toys in a sandbox, Meltzer said. The nonverbal expressive therapy technique is useful with children and adults alike. Meltzer developed the technique in 1983 while working for Hebrew University in Israel, he said.
Meltzer describes himself as someone who was an ideological youth. The Brooklyn native attended Tufts University in Massachusetts where he played football and lacrosse. After graduation, in 1965, Meltzer became a right-fighter championing the struggle of those less fortunate. He enrolled in the Peace Corps and was assigned to Nigeria.
“I left my ivory tower,” Meltzer said recounting the stark contrast between life here and Nigeria, which was in the midst of a bloody civil war. Meltzer witnessed extreme brutality as tribal wars waged over Nigeria's newly found oil deposits.
Meltzer returned to the United States and earned his doctorate at Clark University in Massachusetts. After working briefly in Boston, he headed west to California landing in San Mateo County. California was the mecca of clinical psychology and family therapy development, he said.
Meltzer was involved in the Phase Five drug program, which reformed hardcore drug abusers and employed them as para-professionals to reach out to other drug abusers.
Following Ronald Reagan's election to governor of California in 1972, the mental health industry was transformed from a progressive field into custodial care, effectively killing the Phase Five drug treatment program, Meltzer said. He quit in protest.
After two years of traveling, Meltzer landed in a kibbutz in 1974 falling in love with the spirit of work and cooperation, he said. Kibbutzes are traditional Jewish communal villages where everything is shared. His three children were born and raised on a kibbutz.
Meltzer spent more than 20 years on the kibbutz before moving on. The values of the kibbutz changed. Greed and rivalry replaced sharing and caring. “It became an imitation of the worst values of America,” he said.
Meltzer joined a moshav where he independently owned 20 acres of land and worked communal land with the other members of the community. Meltzer still owns his land on the moshav, where one of his sons and a partner grow Paulownia trees, he said. The trees are coveted in Israel. The Paulownia tree is one of the fastest growing trees in the world.
Another of Meltzer's sons serves in the Israeli Army, bringing the tensions in the Middle East home for the Big Bear resident. To Meltzer's relief his son is stationed on the Egyptian-Israeli border instead of the Lebanese-Israeli border where the Army is battling Hezbollah.
Meltzer's own battle is the war on drugs. He brings a fresh and unique view to substance abuse due to his extended time living outside the country, he said. “In America there is a pill for everything. A pill to make you be like your image of yourself,” Meltzer said.
Americans take pills to cover up what the real problems are, Meltzer said. Substance abuse as a whole is ingrained into the culture, he said. The world traveler has found a new home, a place with quiet and peace.
Contact reporter Brian Charles at 909-866-3456, ext. 134 or by e-mail at briancharles@bigbeargrizzly.net.
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Story Source: Big Bear Grizzly
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Nigeria; Mental Health; Drugs
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