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Life Change Center introduces Karma Boxes to Carson City

Paying it forward is not a cliche to Grant Denton, who has come full circle in his recovery from a homeless heroin addict to director of peer recovery specialists at The Life Change Center.

Giving back to others has become his passion, the modus operandi of which he has successfully passed to the support groups he oversees at the Carson City clinic.

"The bigger picture is a positive ripple moving throughout a community," Denton said. "Drug addiction causes a negative ripple, but recovery can cause a positive ripple."

The latest ripple coming from The Life Change Center is the Karma Box, a simple outreach tool meant to promote healing and reconnection between recovering addicts and their communities.

"When you're a drug addict, you commit crimes against the community and against your family," Denton said. "You get clean, and you try to integrate back into a community that you don't feel welcome in."

He said the Karma Box fulfills dual roles. One is for the benefit of the recovering addict, who learns the value of taking ownership of something in his or her community.

The second purpose is to help reduce the cultural stigma of drug addiction by encouraging community members to participate in filling Karma Boxes with needed items.

"We help them learn to take ownership of their community by giving back to it," Denton said. "The Karma Box is also a stigma-reduction model meant to educate."

The concept is straight-forward: A non-descript wood and plexiglass package box secured by latch that is mounted on a pole and installed at points throughout the community. Items of need are placed inside the boxes. Any person who needs an item in the box is free to take it. No cost or obligation.

When the box is empty, anyone can refill it with other daily need items, such as non-perishable food, toiletries, personal hygiene products and clothing.

"This is more about needs than wants," Denton said. "It gives people a chance to give back to someone who might need it, or they might need it themselves."

The Life Change Center placed its first Karma Box this past Wednesday at the Arco gas station and AM-PM convenience store located at the corner of U.S. Highway 50 East and Lompa Lane in Carson City.

Recovery patients at The Life Change Center build the boxes themselves and install them at a business, agency or organization that wants one on its premises.

A handful of boxes are currently being built for additional locations around Carson City, Denton said, including the Whistle Stop Inn at the corner of North Carson and Washington streets. Three other weekly motels and a tattoo shop are also on the order list.

The Karma boxes will be finished and installed in the coming weeks. Denton said Karma Boxes are produced at a rate of about two per month right now, because patients are only working on the project for a few hours one day a week.

But Denton said he expects patients will gradually increase their production as they become more experienced with the project.

"Our function is to build it, set it and fill it," Denton said.

Proprietors who have a Karma Box placed on their premises are encouraged to decorate the unit with their own custom look, because it is theirs to do so with after all.

"We want each box to have its own identity and to be geographically identified," Denton said. "It will reflect what is going on around there."

Denton said empowering ownership of a community is not just a value for recovering addicts in his program, but should be one that's shared by everyone else, too.

"Things don't work without a community's buy in," he said. "This is bigger than a box or what's in a box. It's the idea of people helping people and lifting people up."

Karma Boxes will have The Life Change Center logo and contact information on them, so that anyone struggling with addiction will know where to turn and how to reach out for help.

If a box tips over or breaks, The Life Change Center will replace it free of charge. There is no cost to have a box installed.

For more information or to have a Karma Box installed on your property, contact Denton at grantadenton@gmail.com or 702-980-0347.

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