Drug-dependent people don’t think much about the future, and it’s a significant obstacle to recovery.
Some studies show that heroin addicts think ahead an average of nine days, while the time horizon for the general population is four and a half to seven years.
This is according to Dr. Warren Bickel who was doing research on addiction and treatment at Little Rock’s University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) when I interviewed him almost a decade ago.
“If you are only thinking a day or so ahead,” Dr. Bickel notes, “it allows you to make choices that completely ignore the consequences of some of your decisions.”
Studies of the brain, he said, “also show that the cerebral cortex, which provides the capacity to plan and think abstractly, among other things, goes offline with addicts, and they go back to the more primitive part of the brain dealing mostly with emotions—the limbic.”
These findings suggest that getting the cortex back online and toning down the limbic are worthy goals in substance abuse treatment.
What brought all of this to mind was a front-page article in the wall Street Journal last week (Rehab Costs Add to Anguish of Addiction—March 9, 2018) which illuminates some of the obstacles to recovery and the high cost of treatment.
“Michelle and Darin Vandecar,” the Journal article begins, “have spent nearly all their time and energy in recent years trying to help their drug addicted sons stay clean. They have spent nearly all their money, too.
“The Salt Lake City area couple,” the article continues, “amassed $120,000 of credit card debt, took out a home –equity loan and cleaned out part of their 401k to pay for multiple rounds of addiction treatment for their three sons, aged 18, 20 and 23.”
A financial Crisis
“The Addiction crisis that is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year is also creating a financial crisis for many families, compounding the anguish caused by a loved one’s destructive illness. Families are burning through savings and amassing huge debt paying for rehab that often doesn’t work.
“The predicament reflects both the difficulty of treating addiction and the haphazard rehab and insurance system many patients face.
“The rehab field is highly fragmented with thousands of small providers offering treatment that often isn’t grounded in science. Some lack medical professionals or licensed counselors, reflecting the field’s roots in 12 step sobriety principles rather than medicine. Yet rehab services often cost big money which insurers don’t always cover.
“Parents and family members, desperate to keep their loved ones from overdosing find themselves shelling out again and again through rounds of recovery and relapse.
“The insurance claims of Americans with employer provided coverage show the rising burden. From 2012 through 2016, spending for substance abuse admissions to inpatient facilities rose 54% per person in this group which includes about half the US population according to an analysis of insurance claims by the nonprofit Health Care cost initiative.
“Consumers out of pocket spending for these substance abuse admissions soared 80% per person.
“For some families bankruptcy is the outcome. Theo Haskins, a 57-year-old accountant in the Salt Lake City area says her son’s years long fight with addiction contributed to her bankruptcy filing in 2013. She says she spent tens of thousands of collars on nearly a dozen rounds of rehab even after insurers kicked in more than $300,000.
“Last year her son Mitchell died of an overdose.
“I spent literally every penny I had,” Mrs. Haskins says. “After all this I failed.”
The cost of treatment is high and the outcome uncertain, but what other options are available?
My Experience
The path I took to recovery was cheap and ultimately successful.
I began with getting a sponsor, going to AA meetings five or six days a week, dealing with depression with a psychiatrist on an outpatient basis and joining an evangelistic Christian church.
Before I put this package together, I tried to tough it out with a few AA meetings, a sponsor, whom I failed to confide in, a superficial faith in God and continued dependence on tranquilizers.
My approach was half-hearted at best and within a short time it failed.
On the 100th day of my “recovery,” I drank a quart of Jim Beam and went into a two-week blackout. Badly shaken by the experience, I got with the program and haven’t had a drink or drug in nearly 40 years. I did it without the expense of a treatment facility, and the need to make the transition from a facility into the reality of every day life. I was fortunate.
Sometimes it’s just not possible to get sober outside of inpatient care, but we can improve circumstances in individual communities where people live and work by developing a hometown pro-active recovery system.
This option has the potential for a higher recovery rate at less cost, and some communities, including Little Rock, have done considerable research and experimentation in this area.
Fighting Back
As a case in point, in 1989, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched “Fighting Back,” a public health initiative aimed at substance abuse reduction. Part plan and part hypothesis, Fighting Back was a seven year experiment designed to help midsize communities, like Little Rock, come together to design and implement a comprehensive public health strategy addressing substance abuse.
Fighting Back sites, it was hoped, would help answer two important questions:
- Could mid-sized communities come together to design and implement a comprehensive public health strategy addressing substance abuse?
- If implemented, would a comprehensive system significantly reduce the number of substance abusers within the community?
Little Rock’s experience was promising but, like the other communities, it lacked a strong faith component and an organization that had staying power and long-term commitment
The future, at best, remains uncertain. Powerful, seductive and potentially deadly drugs continue to flood our cities and towns, which, today, are not sufficiently prepared to fight back with local and accessible treatment.
Recovery is not a one shot deal for masses of people. It is, rather, local and one person at a time, one day at a time.
The Roundtable
Our first step toward creating a Little Rock recovery plan, we would propose would be to recruit a group of local citizens to serve as a recovery-focused “roundtable.”
Its function would be to identify our needs, inventory our resources and make recommendations on how we as a community can reduce substance abuse in our city.
Its focus would include but not be limited to:
1. Mental health evaluation: Psychiatric treatment availability.
2. Addiction treatment: 12 Step meetings, substance abuse treatment facilities, and other programs.
3. Christian resources: Many churches today, mainly protestant, are becoming more proactive and entrepreneurial in addressing the addiction problem. We want to identify them and encourage other churches to join us.
4. Physical fitness: a vital component of recovery.
5. Employment: a major obstacle to recovery and growth is the lack of a job.
6. Families and friends: Relationships are a casualty of alcoholism. Al-anon meetings are widely available and effective, and for now we can build on them.
We at ODAT, intend to pursue the development of a community roundtable focused on helping people overcome their addictions, and will begin to solicit support and leadership from local organizations which have experience dealing with addictions. The Wolfe Street Foundation and Fellowship Bible Church come quickly to mind
I was present at the birth of Wolfe Street in 1982 and served as chairman of the board in 1991, and I joined FBC in 1980, three years after its founding.
Wolfe Street is Arkansas’ largest non-profit resource dedicated to recovery from alcoholism and addiction. Since 1982, it has provided outreach facilities for people and their families who are looking for a way out of the alcoholism and addiction cycle.
Wolfe Street Foundation owns and operates Wolfe Street Center: a 12,000 plus square foot facility located in downtown Little Rock. The Center holds 240 meetings each month, offers 2 meals each week and hosts a variety of workshops and special events for people and their families. Special committees, district groups and other organizations meet at Wolfe Street regularly to further the impact of recovery in Central Arkansas.
Wolfe Street Foundation’s outreach and educational programs include:
- Municipal Outreach/Sobriety Court Partner: Several Pulaski County Judges send DWI as well as other cases to Wolfe Street Center to work off fines with community service and to learn about recovery. Wolfe Street is the ‘first stop’ of rehabilitation as Judges recommend treatment programs for 1st -time alcohol-related offenders to explore treatment.
- Workshops: Wolfe Street offers outreach throughout the year on Co-dependency, Financial Sobriety, Meditation, Carrying the Message and others.
- Higher Education: participating in campus events as colleges & universities work to create awareness to students of the risks of alcohol and substance abuse.
Over the past 40 years, Fellowship Bible Church has planted churches, partnered with other ministries across the globe, sent and support missionaries, and provided resources for outreach and discipleship. It has addressed the addiction problem over the years through its Born Free ministry, Celebrate Recovery program and a variety of prison ministries and it has contributed to the success of the One Day at a Time organization.
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