In the grip of a national opiate-addiction epidemic, Behavioral Health Network of Springfield is poised to renovate an old manufacturing site in Greenfield turning it into a 24-hour, 64-bed detox and rehab center offering both in- and out-patient programs.
Franklin County has not had detox or short-term rehab services for several years. Franklin Medical Center closed its 24-bed Beacon Recovery Center detox facility due to cuts in Medicaid reimbursement. Now the closest options for treatment clinics in-state include Holyoke, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Worcester.
Not everyone is happy about the new rehab center, though at the the former Lunt Silversmiths factory on Federal Street — mostly people who live near the site and those who use the adjacent baseball fields.
At a recent public hearing before the city’s planning board, some residents voiced their reservations about the project: primarily, they were concerned about the kind of people that would be drawn to the neighborhood. They said they don’t want children exposed to addicts and people in the midst of recovery.
The thing is, they’re already exposed to addicts and people in recovery every day. We all are.
In the U.S. there are 23 million people age 12 and older who are addicted to illegal drugs and/or alcohol, according to the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health. That’s more than three times the population of Massachusetts.
The anti-drug propaganda that has been the thrust of the nation’s drug addiction prevention strategy has long painted addicts as scraggly, dangerous, lazy, morally loose people lurking in dark corners. There are drug addicts who fit this description, but they are far from the majority.
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Here are some things you may not know about people addicted to drugs and/or alcohol:
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They work: 70 percent of drug addicts are employed, according to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.
They have families: 7 million children in America have at least one parent who is abusing substances (NCADD).
They’re not who you think: The average heroin user is a white middle-age man living a middle-class lifestyle in the suburbs. He was introduced to opiates through a legal prescription to treat pain, according to a recent Washington University study.
Alcohol is the biggest problem …: In a review of admissions to publicly funded substance abuse programs in 2013, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that the highest percentage of patients — 23 percent of patients — sought treatment for alcohol. The next most popular reason to seek help was for alcohol and addiction to another drug for 18 percent of clients.
… Followed by marijuana: The same study found that the third most popular drug to seek treatment for was marijuana, with 17 percent of patients wanting to break their weed habits. The rest of patients sought treatment for: heroin, 14 percent; crack, 8 percent; stimulants, 7 percent; opiates, 6 percent; and cocaine, 3 percent.
They’re terrified of seeking help: Only 11 percent of addicts seek treatment, according to DrugFree.org.
Addiction doesn’t care about income, race, religion, or education. Why? Because it’s a disease — one that has been recognized as such by the American Medical Association for more than 25 years. Addicts are friends, family, and loved ones; co-workers, mentors, and leaders. And they need help. Treatment is a medical necessity. We wouldn’t turn our backs on a cancer clinic coming to town, and Greenfield residents shouldn’t do that to a rehab and detox clinic either.
I understand the fear, but it’s that fear that keeps the drug epidemic in the United States rolling along.
I encourage the city’s leaders to follow Mayor William Martin’s example and welcome the project. As he noted at a recent hearing, Greenfield is the hub of Franklin County, and it has the area’s courthouse, jail, and hospital. It’s a beacon for the rural area. A detox center is fitting for the city. And with more than 1,000 opioid-related deaths in the state last year, the addicts in all our lives desperately need that welcome light to shine.•
Kristin Palpini can be contacted at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
Eliminating Drug Problems
I probably should stop reading newspapers. Yesterday I saw
this opinion piece about siting an addiction treatment facility. Apparently there
are people who are opposed to such things. The writer of the piece didn’t even touch
the real problem: certain drugs are illegal, so the use of them can become a
problem. Most of the problems involving drugs are from their illegality rather
than the drug itself or reactions to the drug; although there sometimes are
overdoses. If the drugs were legal and the chemical or drug industry
distributed them in a reasonable fashion and government didn’t impose excessive
taxes, then there would be very little trouble from drugs, and the associated
crimes would almost disappear.
The cost of production, transportation, and distribution of
a dose of a recreational drug is a small part of cost the retail price after
the risk premium is removed. The difficulty of covering the expense of being a
drug addict results in some users turning to crime for funds. The other source
of trouble from the drug business is the matter of competition among criminal
gangs. The gang wars over drugs have mostly ended here in the U.S.A., but it is
a major problem in Mexico. Simply making drugs legal would quickly end those
drugs wars, especially if major corporations got involved in the business. Violence
is bad for business, and it can eat into profits.
There are many people who have trouble backing the idea of
legalizing drugs. That trouble is usually caused by ignorance. The medical and
scientific industries have usually condemned drug use, because they make money
from treating addiction, but drug addictions are ordinary reactions to
chemicals that are similar to neurotransmitters, so similar that they can
occupy the receptors for the neurotransmitters, except THC, which has its own
receptors in the human brain, because it is produced in the brain. Heroin uses
receptors for endorphin; nicotine uses receptors for acetylcholine; cocaine is
a reuptake inhibitor for dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephine. And amphetamines
are reuptake inhibitor for dopamine, and they have related effects.
I mention the brain chemistry of some drugs, because it
appears that the drugs are effective, because the users have abnormal brain
chemistry to start with. For example, only about half of the population can
become addicted to nicotine; those who do not become addicted appear to have
more acetylcholine receptors, so it makes no difference whether some are
occupied by nicotine instead of acetylcholine. But in people with fewer
receptors there is a demand for more receptors, so there will be enough for the
acetylcholine and for nicotine. The increase in receptors brings on a need to
fill them, but there isn’t any more acetylcholine being produced, so nicotine
is desired. This increase in receptors and desire to fill the receptors creates
a spiral of addiction that continues until the need for something to fill the
receptors is filled. If there were a way to adjust the number of receptors that
addicts had, then addiction might be cured, but if the drugs that adjusted the
filling of the receptors were readily available and inexpensive, then the same
net result would be attained.
That is to say that complete legalization of drugs would
lead to the elimination of the social problems that are caused by drug
addiction, including excessive taxation necessary to pay for extra police and
for prisons that are necessitated by drug laws. And the chemical imbalances in
the brains of drug users could more readily be corrected.
The only ones who would lose from the complete legalization
of drugs would be the people in the legal system who are involved in drug
prosecutions and some prison guards. There might be a few people involved in
production and distribution who wouldn’t be able to adjust to doing those
things legally, but most of them would find places in the new drug stores.
Rather than being concerned with siting addiction treatment
centers, the drug stores could simply move into spaces in strip malls and such.
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_03/i_03_m/i_03_m_par/i_03_m_par_cocaine.html
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_03/i_03_m/i_03_m_par/i_03_m_par_amphetamine.html