News
Page 4
Street Roots • Jan. 5-11,2018
The challenges o f opiate addiction among inmates and parolees has Clackamas County
piloting a program to give them the drugs they need to stay clean
BY A M A N D A WALDROUPE
S T A F F W R IT E R
r ustin Davenport, Jake Moses and
J
Brandin Riehle are best friends, the
| closest friends each of them has had in
eir entire lives.
The three are in their twenties:
Davenport is 28, Moses, 27, and Riehle, 24.
Like all friends, they have quite a bit in
common. They enjoy playing basketball and
other sports.
Most importantly, they’re recovering from
heroin addiction together.
The three young men are all in Clackamas
County’s Corrections Substance Abuse
Program, or CSAP, a pilot program
exploring the integration of medication-
assisted treatment into its drug treatment
programs for parolees.
The opiate crisis is in full swing in
Oregon, as is the rest of the country. State
and local health departments for Clackamas,
Multnomah and Washington counties show
medical emergencies and fatalities from
opiate addiction are a daily occurance.
Between a dozen and five dozen people
overdose each week. 104 people died from
opiate overdoses in the first six months of
2017, numbers on par with 2016.
As the population of inmates and parolees
who struggle with opiate addiction in
Oregon grows, county jail systems are
examining to what extent medication-
assisted treatment can be integrated into
their services to prevent painful withdrawal,
relapses, and overdoses.
As the name suggests, medication-
assisted treatment involves taking a drug to
recover from using another drug, rather
than relying on behavioral treatment alone.
And studies indicate the treatment drugs
produce better results in preventing relapse.
Davenport, Moses, and Riehle
emphatically believe they would not be
sober and their lives would be completely
different were it not for the CSAP program.
“It’s given all three of us our families
back, the lives that we deserve to live,”
Davenport said.
he CSAP program began integrating the
medical assisted treatment program
within the county’s existing residential
treatment facility six months ago.
Currently, 24 women and 32 men
participate in the program. Captain Jenna
Morrison, director of Clackamas County’s
parole and probation programs, expects the
program to expand to 50 men and 30
women by July. Program participants are
screened by probation officers to qualify.
T
Clackamas joins corrections programs
across the country that have begun
incorporating medication-assisted treatment
into their residential reentry programs,
following a recommendation from the U.S.
Attorney General’s office. Programs were
pioneered in a handful of counties along the
East Coast as early as 2014. Last year Rhode
Island became the first state system to offer
a range of medicines to treat addiction.
In medication-assisted treatment
programs, one of three drugs are used to
treat opiate addiction.
Methadone, the most well-known and
commonly prescribed drug, is an opiate and
controlled substance that is given to patients
in prescribed doses, creating a controlled
high that prevents withdrawal.
Buprenorphine, also known as Subutex,
or Suboxone when combined with Naloxone,
is also an opiate and controlled substance
that is a time-released drug and relieves pain
and cravings.
Vivitrol, also known by as naltrexone, can
be taken in pill form each day or injected
every 28 days. The drug blocks the brain’s
opiate receptors, thus reducing cravings and
reduces, if not entirely eliminates, the
body’s physiological desire for opiates.
The CSAP program uses Vivitrol via
injection. Morrison said the program chose
Vivitrol because there are fewer federal
regulations regarding how the drug is
prescribed and administered.
Medication-assisted treatm ent isn’t
without its detractors. Historically, there has
been resistance to medication-assisted
treatment from those who argue that the
only, or best, way to recover from drug
addiction is abstinence. And methadone is
“shrouded in stigma and controversy,” said
Dr. Alison Noice, the deputy director of
CODA, an Oregon drug treatment agency,
because it is, like heroin, an opiate and
controlled substance.
Morrison admits to being one of those
people. “Twenty years ago, when I was a
baby parole officer, I thought, ‘no way, with
methadone, you’re getting high,’” Morrison
said.
But studies suggest it is more effective
than cold turkey.
An October 2015 article published in the
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
analyzed the relapse rates of 52,000 people
who were in drug treatm ent for opiate
addition between 2004 and 2010 and who
received methadone or buprenorphine as
part of their treatment.
The analysis found that people who
received medication-assisted treatment had
a 50 percent lower risk of relapse than
those without the medicines Healthcare
See MEDICINE, page 5