As a person in recovery, I have great interest in recovery programs. I have been in recovery since the end of July of 2018. I have been fortunate in that I have never relapsed. My own experience is atypical. I don’t think what happened in my case applies to others. Everybody has their own unique story. I watched a show about three women in Huntington West Virginia about 50 or 100 times who together have been making a large difference in the suffering from substance abuse . I cheered the great work and many successes! The show has changed and is continuing to change my perspective. It was convicting to use the language of fundamentalists. The overwhelming majority of people in West Virginia don’t have many opportunities for education or good jobs. Many people there have to do hard, physical labor and many get seriously injured. As a result and for legitimate reasons, they are put on a narcotic. Many of them become addicted and turn to street drugs when they can no longer get the pills. I can tell you from personal experience that in addition to physical pain, narcotics are a way to escape great emotional pain. My own suicide attempts as a result of my childhood started in middle school. Mostly, life didn’t really improve. In any event, I decided this morning to read more about how things are going there.
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Huntington West Virginia has been called the drug capital of America. The three women, Necia who leads Brown Bag Ministry and Huntington Fire Department Chief Jan Rader who is also a nurse and Judge Patricia Keller have made enormous contributions to fighting substance abuse in Huntington. They were supported by the mayor Steve Williams. He began with a very different perspective and approach than the one he ended. He was influenced by his belief about what the conservative nature of his community would accept. He learned how wrong he was. The numbers, the math, were overwhelming.
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www.arnoldventures.org/…
Please read this carefully:
“Years ago I (Mayor Steve Williams) was asked to observe a drug raid. Five hundred grams of heroin had been delivered to this address the evening before, and a SWAT team was going to raid the residence at 8 a.m. the next morning. We thought we were going to have a big score that would prevent a significant amount of heroin from getting onto the streets.
It turned out there was only 35 grams of heroin left in the house when we raided it. Between 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., 465 grams of heroin had been distributed. That was earthshaking enough. Then I asked what a typical dosage is when someone shoots up, and they said the average was one tenth of a gram.
Do the math: 4,650 hits had been delivered in one evening.
That’s how I came to understand that we probably had thousands of individuals who, at the time of the raid, were about to have their first fix of the day. In our town of 50,000 people. That shook me. “
That one day, 4,650 hits resulted from that one score in the town of 50,000 people. It’s not hard to imagine ten percent of the town uses based upon what they found. That’s when he realized that he could NOT arrest the way out of the problem. You can’t arrest and imprison ten percent of your town and it won’t prevent the problem from reoccurring. Therefore, arresting isn’t likely to be helpful as the primary solution to the problem.
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“That’s when I realized we couldn’t arrest our way out of this. If we were going to do this, we were going to have to take a more inclusive, more holistic approach that involves prevention, intervention, treatment — as well as law enforcement. The only way we were going to overcome this was if everybody in the community realized they had an assignment. Every one of us has to take responsibility.”
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He continued to learn that his fundamental beliefs about the community were not necessarily correct.
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“One of the aspects of the plan was the creation of a harm reduction program involving a syringe exchange. I was awfully concerned with starting with that. I told them: When you’re having public meetings, for God’s sake, don’t lead with syringe exchange! We’re a pretty conservative community.
What’s amazing, though, is that after meetings people began suggesting syringe exchange as a place to start. There was an almost unanimous sense in the community that we had to do it. Among other things, it would give us some data on drug use and help us start leading users into recovery programs. “
Wow. He learned a lot about his town. He also realized that the town was not responding with recovery opportunities quickly, if at all. People were dying who had been rescued after an overdose and either were not given an opportunity for recovery or their recovery program was to begin too far in the future.
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On the late afternoon of Aug. 15, 2016, we had 26 overdoses in a 24-hour period. We later learned that this was when fentanyl arrived. All of our first responders were equipped with Naloxone, but two of the 26 people died because they had shot up alone and didn’t have someone to call 911.
Yes, but we later learned that not one of those 24 people was referred to further treatment.
There was one woman by the name of Taylor Wilson. On Sept. 12, word was delivered to her that she’d been accepted into a Suboxone program. [Suboxone is used in medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder.]
The problem was that she had died two days earlier.”
Mayor Williams realized that they needed to let those who were struggling with substance abuse and overdosed know that there were opportunities for recovery and provide support quickly . He implemented a procedure to do exactly that as the story details.
I found this account to give me hope because if even a mayor in conservative Huntington West Virginia can learn that arrests and imprisonment are not the best best primary solution to the problem of suffering from substance abuse, then this truth can be learned and applied anywhere in the country. I am inspired by the women who led the boots on the ground in fighting the suffering from substance abuse, Necia who leads Brown Bag Ministries, Fire Department Chief and nurse Jan Rader, and Family and Drug Court Judge Patricia Keller.
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I want to also say how much this Daily Kos community means to me. I sleep an hour at a time and am extremely nauseous or vomit every day as a result of my medication in my medication assisted treatment. As a result, I have lived a life of isolation and near quarantine long before COVID. That makes the friendships I have here invaluable, friendships based upon common values I share with the community here as a progressive democrat . You all help me and mean more to me than you will ever know.
Monday, Jan 31, 2022 · 1:22:26 PM +00:00
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While I agree that caution should be exercised in the prescription of narcotics, there are situations where it is absolutely necessary because of the level of trauma as well as for hospice patients. Even though I will never take narcotics again barring a catastrophic event, I cannot apply that to others because it would be inhumane to leave patients in intolerable pain. There must be some middle ground rational solution and putting a complete end on any prescriptions for narcotics for anybody is an unacceptable and extremist position.
I favor reducing the number of prescriptions for narcotics patients and careful monitoring of patients on narcotics . I favor being very selective in who is prescribed these medications and why.
This seems like a better approach to the problem.