Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap
Recovery from addictions is great But how do you get treatment?
You’d never know to look at her that Crystal Bush is a former gun packing drug addict and convicted felon whose husband is serving time on drug charges.
Fortunately for her, Crystal is one of the lucky five out of a hundred people in Arkansas who need treatment and get it.
Clean and sober for four years, Crystal lives in a modest little house in the Little Rock suburbs with her four- year-old son, Christopher, drives a Chevrolet Silverado truck, has a job she loves at the Heart Hospital and regularly attends a recovery ministry at St. Andrews church. Her husband is expected to come home within a year.
Very few seeking treatment are as fortunate and perhaps as dogged as Crystal, says Cynthia Crone, who calls the lack of treatment availability a “public health crisis.”
Crone, of UAMS Partners for Inclusive Communities, coordinates the $660,000 “Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap” project (CATG), which addresses the crisis. She was founding director of UAMS ArkansasCARES where Crystal began her recovery.
ArkansasCARES is now a program of Methodist Family Health. It provides housing and care for addicted mothers and their children, but its capacity is limited to 30 families.
Crone says, “Only about 10 percent of persons in need of addiction treatment in the United States receive it. It’s much worse in Arkansas where, in 2007, less than 5 percent of the nearly 270,000 Arkansans in need of addiction or substance use disorder treatment got it.”
The CATG project goal in Arkansas includes increasing treatment and recovery support funding by $25 million by 2012 in order to treat an additional 4,880 Arkansans.
A diverse coalition of policy-makers, providers and consumers are on board to advocate for improved access to quality treatment and support services.
“Without treatment, which includes medical and other professional help, and peer-led (often 12-Step) and other types of recovery support, Crone says the chances of long term recovery are slim. And the human and financial costs of addiction are staggering.
In his book, “High Society,” Joseph Califano, head of Columbia University’s Center on Addiction and, Substance Abuse (CASA), puts the annual cost at a trillion dollars. And it’s no wonder the cost is so high, he says.
“On any given day,” Califano says, “100 million Americans are taking some stimulant, antidepressant, tranquilizer, or painkiller; smoking; inhaling from aerosol cans or glue bottles; or self medicating with alcohol or illegal substances like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and other designer drugs.”
A CASA report released in May showed that almost 10 percent of the U.S. government budget and almost 9 percent of Arkansas’ budget is spent on the consequences of alcohol and other drug problems.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that treatment is highly cost effective.
“Studies have consistently confirmed that every dollar spent on treatment saves up to $12 — or even more,” Crone says. “It’s time to change how we address this costly public health problem.
Given her circumstances it was a miracle that Crystal found sobriety. Here is an account, published in One Day at a Time in September 2006.
“Crystal’s journey to recovery began at dawn in a Hot Springs dope house. She was alone in the squalid shack, abandoned by her methamphetamine-using companions, without food or water or a way to get out of the remote outpost except on foot. Her teeth, rotted by 13 years of daily meth use, ached, and she was four months pregnant.
“Her mouth was dry and her head was pounding, as she set out through the desolate countryside with the early summer sun beating down and the flies and mosquitoes tormenting her.
“In her trek out of the wilderness, Crystal finally came across a farmhouse whose owners let her use the phone. She called her boyfriend, the father of her children, at the Hoover treatment center, and he came, picked her up and drove her back to the facility where she, herself, entered treatment. It was the first step in her recovery.”
ArkansasCARES and community recovery support groups did the rest.
“Most Arkansans know what policy-makers fail to act on — that closing the addiction treatment gap is urgent,” Crone says.
“This is an issue where the public seems to be ahead of policy-makers in understanding the problem and need for change. We need greater access to addiction treatment and recovery support services now.”
This public knowledge, Crone says, is reflected in the results of a recent public opinion poll conducted by Opinion Research Associates, Inc, that showed:
92 percent of Arkansans believe that drug addiction is a serious problem.
57% of Arkansans believe too little is being spent on treatment; only 7 percent believe too much is being spent.
61 percent of Arkansans believe less money should be spent on warehousing prisoners and more should be spent on treatment and prevention.
69 percent of Arkansans favor increasing the tax on beer, wine and liquor to fund addiction treatment.
These Arkansas findings, Crone says, are consistent with the results of a national public opinion poll by Lake Research Partners that showed Americans of all demographics know someone personally who has been addicted to alcohol or drugs and are worried about access to affordable treatment.
Results were also reported for the south, as a whole, as follows:
Three-quarters of Americans (76 percent) and 74 percent of respondents in the South know someone personally who has been addicted to alcohol or drugs. Personal experience with addiction spans all demographic groups.
Half of Americans (49 percent) and 51 percent of people in the South do not think they would be able to afford the costs of treatment if they or a family member needed it. This concern about affordability is highest among Americans with incomes under $50,000 (67% say they would not be able to afford treatment).
Three-quarters (75 percent) of Americans and 72 percent of respondents in the South are concerned that people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs may not be able to get treatment because they lack insurance coverage or cannot afford it.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) support including alcohol and drug addiction treatment as part of national health care reform to make it more accessible and affordable. This support cuts across all demographic groups, including 72% of people in the South.
Two-thirds of Americans (68 percent), including 66 percent of people in the South, also support increasing federal and state funding for alcohol and drug prevention, treatment, and recovery services.
“Addiction and substance use disorders are chronic health problems for which treatment is effective,” Crone says. “Addiction treatment has remission rates as good as those for other chronic health disorders like hypertension, diabetes and asthma.
“Many Arkansans are in long-term recovery from addiction, meaning they have not used alcohol or drugs for years and they live happy, successful, productive lives. Their family members, friends and employers know that treatment paired with peer-based recovery supports is effective when integrated into a long-term recovery plan.
“They also know that too few Arkansans are able to get the help they need to achieve and sustain long-term recovery.”
Like Crystal Bush, Lynda Gibson is a good example of someone who got treatment and is putting her life together.
An intravenous methamphetamine user who served time in jail while she was pregnant with her son, Gibson said that when she woke up in prison one day, she made a decision to turn her life around.
After receiving treatment at Gateway House in Forth Smith, she came to ArkansasCARES. Gibson was the first person to go through the culinary school as a part of the organization’s “Building Bridges” continuing care program.
Named “Student of the Year at Arkansas Culinary School” she graduated as a certified chef and is now working as the kitchen manager at Meadows Assisted Living in Bentonville.
“I enjoy my life here,” says Gibson. “I don’t view people or the world in the same way I once did.”
The CATG project is funded by the Open Society Institute, the Arkansas Community Foundation, and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.u
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