Utah quaran-zine

Utah artists create epidemic-based ‘Quaranzine’ comic anthology Profits of sale benefit Utah Tribal COVID-19 Relief Fund

The more ambitious among us (and we use the term “us” in the very loosest sense) used the COVID-19 quarantine to pick up new skills or start hobbies and projects. One that caught on was making of “quaranzines,” little magazines about life during the pandemic.

Anyone can make them — NPR even put together a how-to guide — but naturally, if you’re, say, a comic artist, yours is going to end up better than everyone else’s. And if you group up with a bunch of other artists to make an anthology, you’re going to end up with a cool artifact of the pandemic.

This is exactly what’s been going on on the other side of the state line. (No ... the *other* state line).

A couple of years ago, D. Bradford Gambles and Spencer Holt formed the “Utah Indie Comic Creators” Facebook group to bring together artists who do comics, mostly in the Salt Lake and Utah Valley area, Gambles said. When the virus put an end to the group’s weekly draw night and canceled the area’s small press festivals, they came up with their own “Quaranzine” as a project for everyone to work on instead. The end product debuted last month.

“It’s a comic anthology wherein each creator was asked to create a one- to four-page comic that is, like, whatever they think of as coming from the word ‘quarantine.’ Some of them were more like autobio, and like more serious in nature or tone. Some of them were just completely made up and or humorous. They ran the gamut,” he said.

All said, the compilation contains the work of 14 artists. Gambles’ contribution follows a couple that is forced to quarantine within a haunted house, while his creative partner Holt’s segment documents a post-apocalyptic trip to the nearest gas station for supplies. Our personal favorite, though, is Angie Sandberg’s simple guide, “What is your mask saying?”

The completed 44-page, 5.5 inch by 8.5 inch black and white comic is available at gumroad.com/utahquaranzine, starting at $1 for the digital version and $5 for the physical one — though people purchasing them can donate as much as they wish beyond that. All of the profits go to the Utah Tribal COVID-19 Relief Fund, which benefits the state’s indigenous communities hit hard by the epidemic.

For obvious reasons, Gambles said that he hopes there is never a need to

— Nick Gonzales

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Courtesy of Utah Indie Comic Creators »» “Quaranzine” is a 44-page anthology featuring comics united by the theme of life in quarantine.

Courtesy of Utah Indie Comic Creators »» The first page of Spencer Holt’s post-apocalyptic quarantine comic.

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Maintaining sobriety during COVID-19

As the coronavirus lingers, how are people in recovery finding community?

By Nick Gonzales DGO STAFF WRITER

DGO tends to be a relatively substance-heavy magazine, writing at length about our enjoyment of cannabis and alcohol in particular. But we recognize that drugs, legal or otherwise, are not for everybody. Which is a large part of why we were curious about how people in recovery from substance abuse disorders are faring during the COVID-19 pandemic. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone truly thriving during the pandemic, but people in recovery are one of the many groups with a heightened vulnerability to the stresses it has unleashed. For many, group meetings are a fundamental part of the recovery process, offering spaces where they can find a community that understands the addiction-related challenges they’re facing or just places to vent about what a week it has been. “Whether you’ve had a substance use disorder or not, if everyone had a group they could just come to and be real once a week, the world would be a damn better place,” said Dan Knapp, a member of the local Young People in Recovery leadership team. And at least in the traditional sense, the coronavirus took that away.

Jerry McBride/BCI Media file »» Candice Seay, center, leads a Young People in Recovery group in November 2018 at the Durango Holiday Inn.

The pandemic begins

Prior to the pandemic, the Durango chapter of Young People in Recovery, a recovery support organization with chapters around the country, was meeting every week. Attendance at the recovery meetings, which were held at Holiday Inn, hovered steadily between 30 to 40 people up until March of this year, said Candice Seay, national chapter coordinator and local chapter lead with YPR. It was finding success in its mission to provide people with the resources they need to thrive.

Outside the meetings, the organization held social events such as barbecues and potlucks. Its kickball team was looking forward to defending its status as the champions of the city’s recreational league. And one Sunday a month, the members of the YPR community would head to Manna’s soup kitchen to prepare breakfast, mingle, and spread the word that recovery was possible.

But along came the virus.

Nick Gonzales/DGO »» From left facing camera, Candice Seay, Krissy Brookmeyer, Dan Knapp, and Mason Dyar attend an outdoor, mid-pandemic YPR meeting.

Jerry McBride/BCI Media file »» A YPR group fills a conference room in November 2018 at the Durango Holiday Inn.

YPR quickly adapted to a virtual support network and started doing recovery meetings through online platforms.

“We also tried to do some social events like virtual trivia, virtual banana bread baking tutorials, just some activities to keep people engaged,” Seay said. “But we saw a huge reduction in engagement. We went from seeing almost 40 people to having eight to 10 people attend our virtual meetings.”

For YPR, online groups were far less than ideal.

“There’s a huge difference in connecting with people through a video screen versus seeing somebody face-to-face, especially at recovery meetings where people really allow themselves to be vulnerable and talk about some sensitive issues,” Seay said. “It’s just kind of hard to have that same connection virtually. So we saw a lot of people just kind of disappear off the radar. I know that there were a handful of folks that they returned to use. ... Basically what we were seeing was a lot of folks felt disconnected, and they were kind of isolated once again, just because they didn’t have access to the community.”

And it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Mason Dyar, a member of YPR’s local leadership team and the lead UAS (drone) pilot with Upper Pine River Fire Protection, said there has been a noticeable increase in suicides, substance abuse, and overdose calls to emergency services during the pandemic.

On a personal level, he knew quarantine would be hard for him and other people in recovery.

“You hear about the world going to crap, and it’s like, ‘Okay, this is gonna be hard for me; this is gonna be a trigger,’ because boredom is triggering for me, and for a lot of people, you gotta have a set schedule. So there was kind of this fear of the unknown,” he said.

He quickly found that there wasn’t much he could do to ease his anxieties about the situation unfolding around him. As the number of people attending the meetings plummeted, so did his mood.

“There was frustration because I wanted to help. All of us want to be there for people. And I had like two weeks there where I was just jaded. ... We were really trying, we were putting in a lot of effort and work to reach people. And it comes from a sense of if we don’t see them, then we assume they’re out there relapsing.”

“We know that there’s a pretty good chance if somebody Keyser Sözes ... It’s always kind of a bummer. You don’t know for sure until you do, but it’s something that you think about: if that person who hasn’t been coming to groups is doing okay,” Knapp said.

Everyone felt the effects of the pandemic a bit differently. Knapp used the first few weeks of quarantine to spend time just with himself and the people closest to him for the first time since he entered recovery. It became real for Seay when she realized that she couldn’t travel — one of the main mechanisms for her recovery was using the money she had previously spent on alcohol to see the world — for the foreseeable future.

More formal therapy options

That drop off in meeting attendance YPR experienced was not necessarily felt by every local recovery group as a result of COVID-19.

Nick Gonzales/DGO »» National chapter coordinator and local chapter lead Candice Seay, center, speaks at a Young People in Recovery group meeting Aug. 13 at Durango’s Fassbinder Park.

“It has certainly changed how we deliver care,” said Stephanie Allred, a psychologist and senior clinical director at Axis Health System. The nonprofit healthcare organization provides services to residents of La Plata, Archuleta, Dolores, Montezuma, and San Juan counties, including behavioral healthcare such as substance use treatment.

“I think the biggest change for us is we have a lot of group programming. And we’ve had to put all of our groups on video conferencing. So the support is there, that contact is there,” she said.

Allred said the response to the switch over to virtual rather than in-person group meetings has been positive. While inadequate internet or technology has prevented some people from participating, Axis has been able to provide them with one-on-one, in-person care. When it comes to participation, she said numbers have remained steady.

“I think we’ve certainly lost some people because they don’t have the technology. But we’ve also made it easier for some people to participate. We’ve got patients who have transportation barriers and time barriers and being able to participate virtually from home has helped them take advantage of those services,” she said.

In-person, socially-distant

It’s difficult to know how the pandemic has affected local 12-step recovery groups unless you’re in one — after all, most encourage their members to practice anonymity in the public media and respect each other’s confidentiality.

On March 17, the Animas Alano Club, which provides a physical location for 12-step groups to have their meetings, stated on its Facebook page that it would not be “closing or refusing to honor our agreements with the groups holding meetings at our location. Groups can make their own decision on meeting schedules, formats and times.”

“I do know a lot of other groups met in person, you know, inside throughout the entire deal,” Dyar said.

Meanwhile, as the temperature warmed up in time for the summer, YPR began experimenting with a new way of meeting in person. In June, they began holding meetings at local parks.

“We’re doing our best to implement best practices and maintain appropriate social distancing, providing masks, having sanitizer — and with that we’ve definitely seen an increase in engagement,” Seay said. “But numbers are still down because I think there’s a lot of different opinions on COVID.”

Some holdouts do so because they disagree with the mask ordinance, she said, while others are more worried than others about catching the virus because they live with people who are especially vulnerable, such as elderly grandparents.

“We spend a lot of time — and we actually lost one of our leadership members — discussing our responsibility for keeping people safe,” Dyar said.

That said, the recovery group meetings are back up to 12 to 15 people, and growing.

“A couple of group members just flat out did not want anything to do with virtual meeting. And so they’ve kind of returned to the group now that we’re able to meet face to face,” Seay said. “But we’re worried because things are not really getting better with COVID. Schools are going to be opening up — we’re kind of thinking that there could be a spike with COVID. And between that and then colder weather ... we’re going to be forced to retreat back indoors because it’s not like we can have an outdoor event when it’s 15 degrees outside.”

Nick Gonzales/DGO »» TOP: Mason Dyar speaks about maintinting sobriety during the COVID-19 epidemic. BOTTOM: Krissy Brookmeyer and Dan Knapp listen to another YPR member at a meeting at Durango’s Fassbinder Park.

Extra activities and silver linings

Until it’s forced to do otherwise, YPR plans to take advantage of the good weather and continue having its recovery meeting every Thursday. The chapter is also adding a yoga series, also in the park. Adding activities for people in recovery to do together — as long as they’re not exposed to the virus — can only benefit the community.

“Substance use disorders can be very isolating,” Allred said. “That’s why groups can be so powerful. It’s really up when people feel like they’re not in this alone, and so some of these organizations and groups are helping reduce that sense of isolation.”

Another silver lining is that groups like YPR have been enjoying a greater degree of unity with alternative support groups as they increasingly work together to support members of the community going through recovery.

“I have seen historically where different groups have had some level of misunderstanding that could lead to people thinking or feeling one way or the other about a group that they’re not a part of. And we’ve definitely lately done a really good job of just saying, ‘Hey, let’s get involved with each other and understand each other’s groups a lot better,’” said Knapp. “It’s always better to just have more perspectives and more people involved. We have the same goal, which is to get our lives back and help other people to do the same thing.”

Even just within Young People in Recovery, the coronavirus pandemic has inspired members of its 60 chapters to interact with other chapters for the first time and share how they were experiencing things differently in California or Ohio than here, Seay said.

“Durango is this weird bubble where we just don’t really experience it on the same level as other places.”

Some of the organization’s chapters were just in the process of starting up when COVID-19 hit, complicating everything and making the process of launching a support group that much more challenging. And as Knapp points out, this era of extreme politics isn’t helping the situation.

“It’s been a shot of steroids into the powder keg that is the political spectrum. People are freaking out about so many different things and everybody has an opinion, and that’s making it even harder to be socially distant and have a stay at home order put on you Because where do we go? You immediately turn to social media and the outlets that we have to connect with people, and it got really messy and still continues to be,” he said.

But even when it looks like the world is falling apart, it’s not impossible for both individuals and the groups they’re a part of to grow.

“I think that some of the organizations that are really killing it right now are the ones that are saying ‘Okay, this is a lot of adversity, but it also is breeding great opportunity. We’ve probably seen people get more educated on things that are really uncomfortable in the last few months, than in the few years prior, and recovery is no different,” Knapp said. “It’s really important to be empathetic and understand everybody’s journey is different. But realize that this is a really great opportunity to help educate other people.”

[ weed] Smoking two bowls of Super Sour Lemon after a bout with COVID made me the happiest weed smoker of all

Very few tastes and smells evoke the feeling of summer for me quite like citrus. There’s just something so clean — so crisp and sunny — about the scent of a lemon or an orange.

I’m not sure where that feeling comes from. Perhaps it was the fact that I grew up in south Texas, where I spent my childhood playing among the bees and the blossoms of my grandparents’ grapefruit and orange trees, or the fact that I equate summer with sitting on a patio with a Corona and lime in hand. Whatever it is, I love that smell and the warm feelings it brings to my soul.

That love of summer and citrus now extends to the Super Sour Lemon strain from Prohibition Herb, which is the strain we’re reviewing this week. This strain, if you aren’t familiar, is a hybrid created by California Sour with Lemon OG.

Despite its lineage, I wasn’t expecting

to taste and smell the citrus in this strain — most strains just smell like weed to me. Let me tell you friends, it’s there. It’s there in spades. And I LOVE it.

I first noticed the heavy smell of lemon when I popped the lid off the container. Rather than smelling skunky or like diesel fuel, I noticed a hint of bright yellow lemon instead.

Where that lemon really stood out, though, was in the taste. I caught freaking COVID earlier this year and it has been RIP to my taste buds ever since. I lost both my sense of smell and my sense of taste with the virus, and I can really only taste salty or sour things these days (which is really frustrating and a topic for another day). So, the fact that I could detect lemon from this strain was a bit, well, shocking.

But, despite the weird ability to suddenly smell lemons, I really wasn’t banking on being able to taste lemon. Details Where to find Super Sour Lemon: Prohibition Herb, 1185 Camino del Rio, prohibitionherb.com

My taste buds got hit just as hard as my nose, and I have struggled to be able to taste any food since. Most things taste like a mound of play-doh, which is nice with super skunky weed, but sucks when you’re eating a steak.

However, it’s my job to do these things, so I threw the Super Sour Lemon buds in the dry herb vape and crossed my fingers. One puff and HOLY CRAP. I COULD TASTE LEMON. Like, really, really taste it. It definitely wasn’t in my head. Every hit I took was more lemon-flavored than the last, and at one point, I swear, I could even taste some mint. (That part may have been in my head, though.)

I ended up smoking two bowls of this beautiful strain back-to-back, probably out of sheer delight that I could taste something other than frigging salt.

And the outcome? Well, the outcome was glorious, too. I felt like I was floating on Cloud 9, my mood elevated and my outlook a hell of a lot better than it has been the last few months.

Both the high and that elevated mood lasted for a hot minute, too. I wasn’t even frustrated by the fact that my house is oddly devoid of delicious junk food right now. I went to the kitchen, dug around for non-existent chips, and returned to the couch with an apple in just as good of a mood as before.

And that chipper feeling lasted through a binge of the new season of Last Chance U — it shouldn’t have, cause

this season is BORING, but it did. I guess I was just really into hearing about football plays and some random coach’s relationship with his wife.

The only real anomaly in my notes, aside from the fact that I can now taste

lemon but only in weed, is the fact that I was tripped out by the sheer idea of football. I guess I got into my head a little bit, where I was totally tripped out by the idea that football is basically like the coach playing chess with humans. Set the pieces up, attack, and then hope to get in the chess version of the end zone (whatever the hell that is). Everything else was just me making notes about how happy I was.

Here’s the bottom line. I haven’t been

able to taste ANYTHING for so long that this strain could have made me hallu

cinate killer clowns and I would have

loved it. But I love it even more now that

it didn’t. It put me in a great mood and made my post-COVID ass taste lemons for the first time in forever.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to taste delicious fruit again, and now I can with Super Sour Lemon. So, if I could wed this strain, I would. It is my one true love.

— DGO Pufnstuf