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Palms West Monthly • September 2020 • Page 1
Palms West
Monthly
WELLINGTON • ROYAL PALM BEACH • WEST PALM BEACH • LOXAHATCHEE GROVES • THE ACREAGE Volume 10, Number 8
PalmsWestMonthly.com
‘FOOD TRUCKS IN THE PARKS’ COMING TO WELLINGTON Check out which food trucks are coming to a park near you! PAGE 4
FREE • September 2020
NATIONAL RECOVERY MONTH
Countdown 2 Zero Adoption Event goes virtual Search from among hundreds of cats, dogs, puppies, kittens (and even chickens and pigs!) when the eight-day pet adoption event is held online from Sept. 26 through Oct. 3.
“West Palm Beach changed – and saved – my life,” says Kāmi Kréaps, manager of the Visitor Information Center at West Palm’s Waterfront.
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Armory Art Center hosts art classes online, on-campus
The Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach will host art courses in September designed for budding artists to experts of all ages, both on campus and online.
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Canine parade brightens Quantum House families Wagging tails and wet noses hung out of car windows for a drive-by pet therapy parade at Quantum House in West Palm Beach, encouraging families to stay “paw-sitive.”
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Photo by Robert Harris/Palms West Monthly
Kami Kréaps, manager of the West Palm Beach Waterfront Visitor Information Center, sits on the iconic “WPB Big Chair” as she celebrates her love of West Palm Beach
and her journey to recover from her decade-long substance use disorder. The chair attracts tourists throughout the year looking for the perfect photo op.
Finding her
True Self
By RON HAYES Palms West Monthly
WEST PALM BEACH — Every year, close to 25,000 tourists stop by the city’s Visitor Information Center on Centennial Square. “What’s there to do in West Palm Beach?” they wonder. “Do you have a map?” they ask. And then comes that one, inevitable question that always makes Kāmi Kréaps smile. “Where’s the beach?” As the center’s manager, one of her jobs is informing puzzled visitors that – well, actually – there is no beach in West Palm Beach. “A lot of visitors don’t recognize that Palm Beach island is separated by water from West Palm Beach,” she says. “And I have to tell them.” Five years ago, Kréaps, 37, arrived in town expecting to find a beach, too. But what she found instead was far more beautiful. Her name, by the way, is pronounced KAY-mee Kreps, and she grew up in the Dallas suburb of Carrollton, Texas. She took some classes at Eastfield Community College in Mesquite, worked as a waitress, and then as a counselor’s assistant at area drug treatment centers. By January 2015, she was working as a marketing director for a law firm in Arlington, Texas, when her boss intervened. “You need help,” he told her. She had been hallucinating at work. “I was hooked on opiates,” she says. “I have a neurological muscle disorder called
NATIONAL RECOVERY MONTH:
WHAT: Every September, the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration sponsors National Recovery Month. Its purpose is to educate Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable those with mental and substance use disorders to live healthy and rewarding lives.
MORE INFO: If you or someone you know
can benefit from treatment, call the SAMHSA’s national helpline at (800) 662-4357.
spasmodic tortillosis and was given a prescription in 2012.” But Kréaps admits her dependencies began years earlier. “My first alcoholic drink was at the age of 15, and over the years substance abuse slowly became the priority,” she says. “It eventually became my entire life. I was officially diagnosed with substance use disorder when I was 23, and continued to live in denial until my life began to spin out of control nearly 10 years later.” After the opiates came benzodiazepines. Three years later, she was addicted to methamphetamines. “And my life drastically took a turn,” she remembers. “I was losing my hair. I weighed 100 pounds, suffered muscle cramping from dehydration and lack of food and nutrients. I had loss of vision and mental focus.
“Somehow, I managed to keep an apartment and a car, until it all just collapsed.” The last treatment center she’d worked at as a counselor’s assistant was the Caron Center in Princeton, Texas. Five years later, on Jan. 10, 2015, she returned as a patient. “Instead of becoming a substance abuse counselor,” she says, “I became an addict.” She stayed at the rehab center for seven weeks. Then, a suggestion by the facility’s director changed her life. “I think you should make a geographical change and immerse yourself in a strong recovery community,” advised the director, who had previously worked at the Hanley Center. “How about West Palm Beach?” “And I agreed,” Kréaps says, “because I thought it had a beach.” Two days after leaving rehab, she moved here. She found no beach, but she did find the Willow Place For Women, an outpatient treatment center where she spent her days, and The Lilly Pad, a halfway house where she spent her nights. She had 12-step meetings daily, drug tests and curfews. “I lived in some form of sober house living for two years,” she recalls. But she also needed what the counselors call a recovery job – something outside the corporate world where recovery could KĀMI KRÉAPS / PAGE 10