Alicia became one of the first patients at the Porter-Starke methadone clinic, starting there almost as soon as she left the hospital. She has spent every day since then, about 10 months now, taking doses of methadone to help control her urges for heroin.
The process hasn't always been easy, nor has she been perfect. Alicia admits to taking a Darvocet a few months ago, going back to the painkillers that started her addiction. But with the help of the methadone and several support groups in the county, the urge to use is growing less and less strong, and Alicia is getting to a point where she can focus on the rest of her life.
A change in focus
Although the 24-year-old Westville resident had dabbled with pot, and later painkillers, since she was in her early teens and lived in Chesterton, she never imagined she would fall for a hard drug like heroin. Her fear of needles alone was enough to keep her away, Alicia said.
A little more than a year ago, though, Alicia's boyfriend tried heroin, and she decided the high it gave him looked good enough to suffer through the shot.
Six months later, her boyfriend was in jail on drug-related charges and she was obsessed with heroin. Her whole life was spent shooting up heroin or finding ways to get it.
"I got very good out of scamming money out of my family and friends," she said.
When her younger brother found out what was going on, he told Alicia's parents, who got her to detox in February at Saint Anthony Memorial Hospital in Michigan City.
Her life went from being consumed by heroin to being driven to find a way to escape it. In the beginning, she went to group counseling sessions at Porter-Starke services three days a week and started attending several Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings each week
The intensity has changed, though. Her classes at Porter-Starke are done, and she doesn't always make it to her group meetings because she doesn't have a car.
The one constant, though, ever since she finished detox, is her trip to the methadone clinic.
Every weekday Alicia's brother drives her to the clinic between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. She goes in, checks in at the front window and then goes around a partitioning wall to a window, where a nurse gives her a liquid dose of methadone. When there's no wait, the entire process takes a minute, maybe two, to complete.
No matter what, Alicia repeats that process every weekday.
Methadone a help
Alicia knows many people don't approve of the clinic. Even people in her support groups look down on it, because they see it as replacing one addictive drug with another, she said.
For Alicia, though, the methadone has been a godsend.
Most people going through withdrawal from heroin experience debilitating side effects: dizziness, nausea, headaches. It's almost impossible for many heroin addicts to get off the drug without some kind of chemical help because the heroin has physically changed the brain, Rochelle Schwartz-Bloom, professor of pharmacology at Duke University, said. Methadone calms those symptoms without giving the addict any sense of a high.
That was the case for Alicia, who said that in the beginning, methadone helped keep her from the pain of withdrawing. She was still irritable, but the desire to use wasn't as strong.
That's not to say Alicia never feels the temptation to use. At the start of her recovery, Alicia purged her life of all ties related to drugs -- friends, phone numbers, places she went. For a while, though, she hung on to a pipe she had used to smoke heroin.
"Just having it made me feel a little better," she said. "It was like just in case, because if I didn't have it and I wanted to use, I'd be screwed."
Avoiding drugs is impossible, though. Watching a TV show with drug use or even just driving a car, knowing that she could head for Chicago and the drugs there, had a mental effect on her, Alicia said. She took to talking to her NA sponsor when she drove to keep that urge in check.
The temptation to use even popped up in her group classes at Porter-Starke, when one of the group members said her husband still used OxyContin.
"Immediately when I heard that I kind of started thinking in my head, I wonder if I can talk this girl into getting this stuff for me," Alicia said.
Today's a different story, though. Alicia still has to avoid anything that was connected to drugs, but the day-to-day desperate desire to get heroin isn't there anymore.
"It's bothersome to me, but not as much as it was," Alicia said of seeing or hearing references to heroin.
She's not done yet, though. Methadone is an addictive drug, like heroin, and can have withdrawal symptoms worse than heroin. Alicia is scared of becoming hooked on methadone to the point where she can't get off of it and often talks about wanting to start weaning herself from it.
So far, reality has proven a bigger player, and Alicia had to increase her original dosage of 40 milligrams to 75 milligrams. Getting off methadone will take a while, because most patients usually have to go down one or two milligrams at a time.
Some wary of the clinic
Some people remain wary of the clinic, though. Bob Taylor, head of the Porter County Narcotics Unit, said he originally fought the clinic because of fears of what it would become: A hang-out for dealers peddling their wares to the people who obviously want some.
So far, that hasn't been the case. Carmen Arlt, director of addictions programs at Porter-Starke, praises the multitude of cameras for keeping dealers away. It's almost impossible to walk around the clinic or anywhere near it outside without being spied on.
Taylor still has his reservations, though. He points to how two of the people who died from drugs this year died from a methadone overdose.
"So I question, is that a treatment or is that a problem?" he said.
Despite the concerns, the clinic has grown considerably since it opened in 2008. It started out serving about 50 clients, Arlt said, and now serves about 150, some of whom are on suboxone, a drug that prevents drug users from feeling the pleasures of other drugs.
Alicia, for the most part, supports the clinic. She gets upset when people automatically assume only deadbeats would be there and that they would just loiter around, causing problems. Many of the people who Alicia sees at the clinic, she said, often look like they come from any middle-class family in the county.
The group counseling sessions, called intensive outpatient programs, didn't do as much for her, though, Alicia said, but that was mainly because Porter-Starke didn't have a counselor devoted to the program at the time, she said. A new counselor filled the vacancy each week, meaning the clients never got below the surface of their problems.
Recovery a long process
Alicia's recovery isn't just about heroin, though. She quit her job in Michigan City earlier this year because she had another job offer, but that position ended up being cut for budgetary reasons. She has no car, so she has to rely on rides from family members. With no job and no way to get around, she spends most of her time at home.
She tries to keep busy. One November afternoon, sheets of freshly baked cookies covered her kitchen countertops, and Alicia showed off a plate of decoupage she had made with a friend's wedding invitation. A sewing machine sat on her kitchen table so she could work on making an apron.
The Narcotics Anonymous meetings she attends also have helped, when she can make them. Alicia said she was thrilled when one group asked her to chair the meeting, which includes finding speakers, making coffee and keeping it running. The position, although it might sound like nothing special to most people, is considered an honor because it shows the person is ready for the responsibility.
She's learning to have healthier relationships and also to take care of problems instead of using drugs to solve them, Alicia said. One of the reasons she got hooked on pain killers was because she had back pain. Alicia finally went to a chiropractor who helped her manage the pain.
College is also in the future for Alicia, although her track record with it isn't great. Alicia has started classes at Ivy Tech Community College several times, but always dropped out. She wants to go back, although she has no set plans right now to do so.
Life with her family is stressed, though. Alicia said she hasn't spoken with her mother in several months because she felt her mom was too controlling. Trust is still missing between Alicia and her family, she says. Alicia knows they won't immediately trust her after all her lies, but she wonders if they ever will.
"I don't blame them for not trusting me at all," she said. "But at the same time, you have to give trust to start the trust process again."
Her main goal, Alicia says, is finding a job. She had an interview with one factory in the area but couldn't make it because, again, no one could take her and she didn't have a car.
Some of her transportation problems will be relieved, though, now that she's moved into Women's Recovery in Valparaiso. Alicia decided to make the move after breaking up with her boyfriend. Instead of living in?Westville, where there is no public transportation, she'll be able to use the city's bus service to get around, plus people with Women's Recovery have already agreed to drive her to the methadone clinic, taking a burden off her family, Alicia said
She will have a car someday, however, and with that will come a freedom that could be her downfall. It's easy to avoid drugs now, with no way to get to them. But a car gives her the ability to drive to Chicago and meet with old friends.
"I can't look in the future," she said, "but I would like to think I?won't go back to the way I?was."
Contact Teresa Auch Schultz at
477-6015 or
tauch@post-trib.com.
Porter County drug deaths
No breakdown is available yet for 2008; the total of 31 drug deaths, a record for the county, does not include pending cases from December.
'01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08
Prescription OD 1 3 1 1 2 4 3 -
Heroin+ OD 3 2 5 0 2 2 4 -
Other Illicit Drug OD 0 1 2 0 2 5 6 -
Mixed Drug Reaction 2 6 2 3 5 6 2 -
Drug Involvement 0 0 0 3 1 1 0 -
Alcohol Toxicity 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 -
Total 6 12 10 7 12 18 16 31
Source: Porter County coroner
http://www.post-trib.com/news/1372010,drugs1.article
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