San Patrignano: More than a championship, a story about people…

Monica works in the press office of the FEI 2005 European Championship, with Carlo Bozzo. She’s around thirty, but looks like twenty and has a winning smile. Monica is full of life, intense, speaks perfect English, but with the hands like a native Italian. Her skills in Shakespeare’s language are no wonder when you know that she lived close to San Francisco all her life, before coming to San Patrignano in May 2000. She has a real passion for horses and was riding herself when she was a child but left hunters competitions behind when she got addicted as a teenager.

“I started drugs when I was fifteen, but it took me almost ten years to admit that there was a problem and to speak openly with my family”, she explains. “I went to several hospitals in the USA”, she continues “where I followed therapies, participated in group discussions and was given pills. And I started again, in and out, for about a year”.

“I remember very well when everything changed. The psychologist I was seeing twice a week for several years, who was filling me up with 20 pills a day, called my father one day and said he was giving up. He said I was a lost case and that my serious psychotic problems were anyway hereditary.”

But Monica’s father, of Italian origin, would not give up. He started looking on the Internet and found San Patrignano. He remembered the community from articles he had read in the Italian newspapers in the 80’s. “He sent me here, and I came to please him” Monica remembers. “I thought that it was like with the other therapies I had followed, that I would stay here for a few months and goodbye”.

Each newcomer to San Patrignano is assigned a “guardian angel”. Alda, 35 years old and two kids, became Monica’s first friend within the community. “A very new type of friend for me” Monica explains, “not like those who feel sorry for you and let you do what you want. Alda would fight with me, help me grow up. I think she learnt from me as well and that there was a real exchange”.

Monica participated in the campaign against drugs at the Italian schools which was organised from September 2004 to June this year. It was like a tour with 90 stops in 90 cities all around Italy. San Patrigano’s residents were offering their testimony to kids: “The impact is much greater than when a doctor or a specialist is having a speech in front of the children. We were talking about real life, about our real experience”.

It is about six months now that Monica is involved in the preparation of the press service for the Europeans. “We are a great team. Carlo is brilliant, intelligent and so funny.. you can speak about anything with him, but we have a passion in common: rock-and-roll!”.

The journalists are feeling most welcomed in the press office. Alan Smith, well known journalist of the Daily Telegraph (Great Britain) said “ After my visit here two years ago, I knew that San Patrignano people would do a good job. But I didn’t expect such an outstanding press centre as this. The people could not be more helpful in all respects”.