Dr. Jessica Kiss’ twin girls cry most mornings when she goes to work. They’re 9, old enough to know she could catch the coronavirus from her patients and get so sick she could die.
Kiss shares that fear, and worries at least as much about bringing the virus home to her family — especially since she depends on a mask more than a week old to protect her.
“I have four small children. I’m always thinking of them,” said the 37-year-old California family physician, who has one daughter with asthma. “But there really is no choice. I took an oath as a doctor to do the right thing.”
Kiss’ concerns are mirrored by dozens of physician parents from around the nation in an impassioned letter to Congress begging that the remainder of the relevant personal protective equipment be released from the Strategic National Stockpile, a federal cache of medical supplies, for those on the front lines. They join a growing chorus of American health care workers who say they’re battling the virus with far too little armor as shortages force them to reuse personal protective equipment, known as PPE, or rely on homemade substitutes. Sometimes they must even go without protection altogether.
“We are physically bringing home bacteria and viruses,” said Dr. Hala Sabry, an emergency medicine physician outside Los Angeles who founded the Physician Moms Group on Facebook, which has more than 70,000 members. “We need PPE, and we need it now. We actually needed it yesterday.”
The danger is clear. A March 21 editorial in The Lancet said 3,300 health care workers were infected with the COVID-19 virus in China as of early March. At least 22 died by the end of February.
The virus has also stricken health care workers in the United States. On March 14, the American College of Emergency Physicians announced that two members — one in Washington state and another in New Jersey — were in critical condition with COVID-19.
At the private practice outside Los Angeles where Kiss works, three patients have had confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Tests are pending on 10 others, she said, and they suspect at least 50 more potential cases based on symptoms.
Ideally, Kiss said, she’d use a fresh, tight-fitting N95 respirator mask each time she examined a patient. But she has had just one mask since March 16, when she got a box of five for her practice from a physician friend. Someone left a box of them on the friend’s porch, she said.
When she encounters a patient with symptoms resembling COVID-19, Kiss said, she wears a face shield over her mask, wiping it down with medical-grade wipes between treating patients.
As soon as she gets home from work, she said, she jumps straight into the shower and then launders her scrubs. She knows it could be devastating if she infects her family, even though children generally experience milder symptoms than adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, her daughter’s asthma may put the girl at greater risk of a severe form of the disease.
Dr. Niran Al-Agba of Bremerton, Washington, said she worries “every single day” about bringing the COVID-19 virus home to her family.
“I’ve been hugging them a lot,” the 45-year-old pediatrician said in a phone interview, as she cuddled one of her four children on her lap. “It’s the hardest part of what we’re doing. I could lose my husband. I could lose myself. I could lose my children.”
Al-Agba said she first realized she’d need N95 masks and gowns after hearing about a COVID-19 death about 30 miles away in Kirkland last month. She asked her distributor to order them, but they were sold out. In early March, she found one N95 mask among painting gear in a storage facility. She figured she could reuse the mask if she sprayed it down with a little isopropyl alcohol and also protected herself with gloves, goggles and a jacket instead of a gown. So that’s what she did, visiting symptomatic patients in their cars to reduce the risk of spreading the virus in her office and the need for more protective equipment for other staffers.
Recently, she began getting donations of such equipment. Someone left two boxes of N95s on her doorstep. Three retired dentists dropped off supplies. Patients brought her dozens of homemade masks. Al-Agba plans to make these supplies last, so she’s continuing to examine patients in cars.
In the March 19 letter to Congress, about 50 other physicians described similar experiences and fears for their families, with their names excluded to protect them from possible retaliation from employers. Several described having few or no masks or gowns. Two said their health centers stopped testing for COVID-19 because there is not enough protective gear to keep workers safe. One described buying N95 masks from the Home Depot to distribute to colleagues; another spoke of buying safety glasses from a local construction site.
“Healthcare workers around the country continue to risk exposure — some requiring quarantine and others falling ill,” said the letter. “With emergency rooms and hospitals running at and even over capacity, and as the crisis expands, so does the risk to our healthcare workers. And with a shortage of PPE, that risk is even greater.”
Besides asking the government to release the entire stockpile of masks and other protective equipment — some of which has already been sent to states — the doctors requested it be replenished with newly manufactured equipment that is steered to health care workers before retail stores.
They called on the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate the distribution of stockpile supplies and recommended ways to ensure they are distributed as efficiently as possible. They said the current system, which requires requests from local, state and territorial authorities, “may create delays that could cause significant harm to the health and welfare of the general public.”
At this point, Sabry said, the federal government should not be keeping any part of the stockpile for a rainy day.
“It’s pouring in the United States right now,” she said. “What are they waiting for? How bad does it have to get?”
By: Laura Ungar Title: Physicians Fear For Their Families As They Battle Coronavirus With Too Little Armor Sourced From: www.thefix.com/physicians-fear-their-families-they-battle-coronavirus-too-little-armor Published Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 07:43:04 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
In 2015, I lost my brother, beloved comedian Harris Wittels, to a heroin overdose. He was 30 years old. Two years later, Jessica Cordova Kramer lost her brother, Stefano Cordova, Jr., to a fentanyl overdose. He was 34. We didn’t know it at the time, but our similar losses would soon morph into something much bigger than us, our brothers, or our families. This loss would bring us to Last Day.
Starting in season 1 with the opioid crisis, Last Day from Lemonada Media zooms in on a person’s last day of life, exploring how they got there and how we, as a society, have gotten here. Nearly one in three people know someone with an opioid use disorder. Last Day leverages first-person storytelling to humanely examine an American epidemic that has taken 400,000 lives since 1999, breaking through the data to expose the human impact and the role society, public policy, and health care should play to combat it.
To start, we meet me, host Stephanie Wittels Wachs, who, with humor (yes, humor) and vulnerability, lays out my personal connection to the topic. From there, the podcast zooms in on Stefano Cordova Jr.’s last day of life before his accidental fentanyl overdose, including a “rewind the tape” episode that explores whether any of it could have been prevented. Last Day then progressively and insightfully zooms out to reframe the narrative and understand the complex factors that obscure and prolong this national health crisis. Listeners have revelations right along with me, as my perspective shifts in real-time.
This show offers truckloads of insight. Listeners are exposed to the throng of perspectives of those impacted by this epidemic, from paramedics who treat the same individual multiple times a day, to a woman who was incarcerated, beaten, stabbed, and sexually assaulted in a maximum-security prison for forging false prescriptions, to the children caught up in the crisis all across America, in cities and rural communities.
Last Day exposes the largely ineffective treatment centers and America’s unwillingness to invest in effective harm reduction strategies like medication assisted treatment and safe injection sites. The show discusses national policy, legislative efforts, and international solutions that have worked while highlighting personal stories about the hidden toll of this crisis, including adoptive parents of children born with drug exposure and those struggling themselves with drug dependency.
Our Last Day team is doing the back-breaking work of creating a roadmap for policymakers, recovery experts, medical professionals, and family members like myself to view addiction as a manageable chronic disease rather than a guaranteed fatal illness. Guests this season have included Sarah Silverman and Aziz Ansari (debriefing my brother Harris’s death), Dr. Gabor Maté (the link between childhood trauma and addiction), Congressman Patrick Kennedy (exploring the federal health policies that help and hinder progress, as well as his own demons), Dr. Nzinga A. Harrison (an addiction medicine doctor who is creating a new whole-person model for sustained and humane treatment), Dave from Dopey podcast (deep-diving on AA and the 12 Steps), and other experts (Andy Slavitt, Michael Botticelli, David Smith, Dr. Robert Meyers), harm reductionists (Hiawatha Collins, Dr. Sam Snodgrass), authors (David Sheff, Ben Westhoff), and community leaders (Mayors Svante Myrick and Marty Walsh, as well as DeRay Mckesson).
Part serial narrative, part feature storytelling (think 20-20 meets Serial), Last Day frames addiction as an acquired disease of brain structure and function, not a choice or moral failing. Listeners become immersed in the intimate details of why Stefano was refused a life-saving dose of Vivitrol and what it’s like to be seven-months sober on a methadone maintenance program. The podcast series shows how treating those with substance use disorders with dignity and respect can shift the social stigma around opioid treatment, humanize the experience for all of us, and ultimately save lives.
By investigating often-times controversial solutions, Last Day brings a clear focus to the fact that solutions to this crisis do exist. As one example shows, medically staffed safe injection sites could save 20,000 lives a year; another, that medication-assisted treatment reduces mortality by 50 percent. The show is urgently painting a picture of hope around how to solve this massive public health crisis while reaching a wide and growing audience.
We have interviewed over 60 people as of February 2020, all to create a 25-episode season that tells the compelling, human story of this oft sensationalized crisis. Furthermore, much of the content can be extrapolated beyond the opioid crisis to apply to other serious substance use disorders.
Since January, the second half of the season is expanding the reach of the show through more “last day” stories and an even deeper-dive into treatment options in America. Last Day is creating the American roadmap out of the opioids crisis and is a must-listen for all who are impacted by addiction, including policy makers, health care providers, first responders, loved ones, and family members.
After losing both of our brothers to opioid overdoses, Executive Producer Jessica Cordova Kramer and I decided to tell the story of our brothers’ deaths with the goal of saving lives. And we believe we are doing that. But in the process, we created a much bigger platform for content and community. In April 2019, we founded Lemonada Media, a podcast network that shares the unfiltered version of humanity. Find us and all of our shows at www.lemonadamedia.com.
By: Stephanie Wittels Wachs Title: Podcast Explores a Person’s Last Day of Life Before Dying from Overdose Sourced From: www.thefix.com/podcast-explores-person-s-last-day-life-dying-overdose Published Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2020 08:39:17 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
(This article is excerpted from Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row by Tessie Castillo, Michael J. Braxton, Lyle May, Terry Robinson and George Wilkerson, Black Rose Writing, 2020.)
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing out the car window at a man whose stride betrayed an inebriated state. He did not move fast, but his rolling gait made it seem as if he were walking down a steep hill despite being on a level sidewalk.
My mother glanced through the window as we drove up Main Street in the late morning traffic. Spring had turned the thick grass of the park beside us a vibrant emerald.
“His name is Calvin,” she said. “Be sure you stay away from him.”
“Why?” Ten-year-old eyes sharpening, I watched the man. His hair stuck out in greasy spikes of charcoal and ash, while his matted beard was like a spill of salt across his jowls.
“Because I said,” came my mother’s typical reply.
Some weeks later I asked Dad who Calvin was. His response was equally mysterious.
“Stay away from him, you hear? He’s a junkie. A hobo.”
It was the same instruction I got for most things my parents thought were bad for me. My curiosity poured contempt on such answers.
A few years later I was on my paper delivery route and heard some stories about Calvin.
“He’s crazy! Huffs glue every day.”
“It’s a wonder he’s got a brain in his head.”
“He’s a drifter, moves from town to town then heads south for the winter. Never know where he’s been or where he’s going.”
In the small town of Brunswick, Maine, people spread rumors about the time Calvin spent in AMHI, an asylum spoken of in the serious tone of a campfire story. One kid told me Calvin had killed a man for pocket change and spent a bunch of time at Thomaston, the state’s only maximum security prison in the 1970s. Others said police couldn’t prove Calvin did it because the hobo had no fingerprints, having burned them off handling cans of food straight from the fire. Some said he slept under the trestle bridge, but when I went to investigate I found only broken bottles, cigarette butts and rocks.
I took to walking the tracks hoping for a glimpse of Calvin. The tracks were a convenient short cut from the high school through the downtown area and past Bowdoin College. Since many of the mills in Maine had closed, trains were infrequent travelers on the tracks, as rare as long summers in the Northeast. When a train did come I would scramble aside and watch in fascination, wondering where it had been and where it was headed. In the wake of its mechanical noise, quiet rushed in. I’d think of how the horizon held another town where another kid like me walked on wood ties and threw rocks at tall weeds, perhaps also searching for an elusive hobo.
The harder it was to find Calvin, the more my desire grew to meet this mysterious figure who vanished at will and made others avoid the tracks. I enjoyed my treks among the crushed granite, discovering the edges of a forbidden world, one that swallowed my oldest sister and sent her to a place called “rehab.” I picked up anything that caught my eyes, as my younger sisters and I had often done at the beach, searching tidal pools for the creepy crawly things of the sea. On the tracks, instead of hermit crabs I found plastic lighters, half-smoked cigars and empty wine bottles. Once I dared open a full can of beer that had been lost amongst the weeds. I sipped and immediately sputtered, dropping the can and wishing for a drink of water. Once I found a smashed nickel, the date distorted into an elongated 1978, the year of my birth. I put it into my pocket.
One day I finally met Calvin.
Jouncing down the tracks several hundred feet in front of me, he clutched a crooked cigarette to his face, hollowing his cheeks and exhaling pale exhaust. Seeing me, he held up a hand. I mimicked the action and stood waiting, before he left the tracks and disappeared into the woods.
The next time we met, a plastic shopping bag sprouted from his face then deflated as he huffed the contents. Legs fidgeting, he watched me watch him, finished with the bag and stuffed it into his pocket. Calvin looked through me for a long moment.
“Can ya spahre some change, brother? Brother.” His breath came in fits and gasps, voice hoarse and full of phlegm.
Wary of the twitching blue-eyed man, I gave him the coins in my pocket and waited for the arcade to light up. He smiled a bit and shook my hand. “Thank ya, brother. Brother.” I liked to imagine it was the Catholic charity of my upbringing shining through that moment but in reality I liked how he called me brother. His voice was deep and gravely like Hulk Hogan’s. I didn’t follow Calvin as he staggered off, instead watching him mutter and run grubby fingers through wild hair. I wondered where he was going. The duct tape on his boots tapped the sidewalk as he went.
Calvin usually vanished in October and reappeared around May, sitting on a park bench shouting at cars or crossing the street with his rolling gait. One time, for a Boy Scout function, we delivered canned goods to the Tedford Shelter, the only homeless shelter in town. Expecting to see Calvin, I put aside some cans in a bag just for him—beans and franks, ravioli—but was disappointed to learn he rarely stayed there. Later on I discovered he survived long winters by migrating south or by getting arrested and thrown in jail for petty offenses.
I did not realize that Calvin’s lifestyle had a significant impact on how I chose to respond to the rigors of adolescence. Rather than try to make the right choices, I allowed events to dictate my actions. Generally, I leaned towards the least amount of responsibility and fewest ties to people. It was easier than trying, and what was failure if not another dirt road lined with broken bottles, cigarette butts and discarded condoms?
When I dropped out of high school at the beginning of my sophomore year, consequences were the farthest thing from my mind—so too the lessons of the D.A.R.E. program, my oldest sister’s struggle with addiction, and parental warnings against hanging out with the wrong people. Huffing seemed a natural choice when other drugs or even alcohol were unavailable. My world shrank to the pinpoint of each enjoyable moment without a single thought involving homelessness or mental illness. Walking the tracks as a sixteen-year-old dropout became the one familiar path in my life that made sense of everything. When I saw Calvin he was no longer strange or pitiful. We sat under a bridge and hot-boxed a joint before going our separate ways.
There were no profound conversations between us, very little talking at all. He didn’t regale me with stories of a misspent youth as I poured mine out between the crushed rocks of the tracks. He spoke a word of thanks here and there and that familiar greeting: “Brother. Brother, can ya spahre some change?” If I couldn’t, I gave him cigarettes or smoked a joint or we shared the poison destroying our thoughts—him glue, me, aerosols. Alcohol was a rarity, but when I had a few extra dollars I trusted him enough to get us both a 40-ounce of the god-awfulest malt liquor.
The last time I saw Calvin was the night my parents kicked me out of the house. I had been in and out of the Maine Youth Center and rehab, periodically at home, institutionalized, and homeless. I was eighteen and living at home on the conditions that I would work and not use drugs. The former was easy enough, the latter not so much. That night Dad picked me up from the paper plant after I had spent eight hours stacking inserts and adjusting the conveyor belt coming from the press. Though I’d washed up there were still smears of ink on my neck and ear from errant itches. He dropped me at the curb of the convenient store with everything I owned stuffed into a backpack. I had known this was coming and it felt just, but this did not lessen my sense of wonder as he gave me a quarter, told me to call one of my friends and sped off in the family station wagon.
As I lit a cigarette, Calvin staggered around the corner and stumbled to a halt next to me. “Can ya spahre some change, brother? Brother.”
I gave him a cigarette. “I ain’t got but some change. My dad kicked me out.”
“That’s a shame, that is. That is. Young fella like you ain’t hurt hairs on a fly’s ass.” Then he surprised me by saying more. “You could go to the Tedford Shelter before it closes at midnight.”
It was the best advice he could have given me at that moment. I thanked him, handed over a few cigarettes and hurried to get a bed for the night.
By the time I began sharing experiences with Calvin—walking the tracks, huffing, homelessness, institutionalization—it was too late to give any thought to negative influences or poor role models. He was neither and both. Something about him spoke to an indescribable otherness in me. I found it hard not to like a man who cared nothing for what other people thought even when they were right. He seemed say, stubborn people learn hard lessons, but if you ignore it all and give them the finger, it hardly matters.
Except it does matter. Running away from home and spending time in the Maine Youth Center for various acts of delinquency were situations I could walk away from. Rehab and brief stays in a mental hospital were challenges overcome with a little dedication and self-reflection. What I could not escape was how my reckless choices grew acutely self-destructive.
It’s hard to judge which mistake was the pivotal moment in a young life full of them. The easy answer should be whatever action caused my incarceration, and while I believe that is true most of the time, I also believe there were exits prior to the end of this particular road.
While my life at nineteen, the year I was arrested and convicted of murder, was little different from a life at sixteen, there was a subtle erosion—whether from drugs, alcohol, huffing or a combination of circumstances—in my ability to respond and cope. The beginning of the end occurred when my girlfriend and I agreed that she should have an abortion rather than carry our child to term. The decision affected me more deeply than I could have anticipated. I took to self-mutilating, a behavior that had been absent for nearly three years. Where before the act of cutting and burning my arms had shocked me out of whatever emotionless vacuum I seemed to be in, this time nothing penetrated the fog.
I was hospitalized, drugged and diagnosed, but it merely stirred my hatred of institutions. Those places made me feel like an animal; they were a driving force behind why I felt at home on the road always moving, walking away from responsibility and the rest of the world. After experiencing a psychotic break, which led to an extended stay at Broughton hospital, I knew that I was not okay. Things were never going to be “just fine.”
Maybe this is where I grew to dislike the meaningless complex question “How are you?” What does that even mean? In the hospital my world flipped from the undiluted freedom of an open road, with my only concerns being food, cigarettes, and a drink, to a place with constricting jackets, four-point restraints, and “How are we doing today, Mr. May?” Screaming ninnies streaked the hallways as burly orderlies wrestled their wards’ naked bodies into the shower. Grown men crouched on the floor caressing their scalps with palsied fingers.
There is no making sense of crazy. “Mental illness” was not a word back then any more than iPhone or Arab Spring. I “stabilized” in the hospital because that was their goal. They pumped me full of drugs, stood me on my feet, spun me around three times and pushed me back out into the world. A place that was too bright and shiny for my darkened eyes. Words had been thrown at me—personality disorder, psychotic break, red flags, schizo-affective—but they meant nothing in the face of my one driving thought. I had to hit the road. Get moving. Out of this place where the mind raged with regret, self-pity and sorrow. Hit the road and find a place where it would be cool in the summer and tolerable in the winter. With a bottle to dull the sharper thoughts and a can to shatter the rest. Everything I could need or want on my back and only the future to stop me. Would that I had given Calvin a thought then, he might have saved us all.
Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row is a collection of essays written by residents of North Carolina’s Death Row. Each carefully crafted personal essay illuminates the complex stew of choice and circumstance that brought four men to Death Row and the small acts of humanity that keep hope alive for men living in the shadow of death. Now available on Amazon.
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By: Lyle May Title: Namaste Sourced From: www.thefix.com/namaste-crimson-letters-voices-from-death-row Published Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2020 08:05:55 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Jennifer Warren has spent years recruiting the poor and desperate to her drug rehabilitation program in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina.
She promised them counseling and recovery for free. When they arrived, she put them to work 16 hours a day for no pay at adult care homes for the elderly and disabled.
Thrust into the homes with little training or sleep, the rehab participants changed diapers, bathed patients and sometimes dispensed the same prescription drugs that sent them spiraling into addiction in the first place.
For some, the temptation proved too great. They snorted prescription pain pills, swallowed droplets of morphine from used medical syringes and peeled fentanyl pain patches off patients and sucked them to get high.
Then there were the allegations of assault. At least seven participants from Warren’s program, Recovery Connections Community, have been accused of sexual misconduct or assault of patients at the homes. Former participants and workers said no one reported the incidents to social services, as required by law. The accused continued working or were simply transferred to another care home.
“There’s a whole lot in the program that’s covered up,” said Charles Polk, who completed Warren’s program in 2017 for alcohol addiction. “The only thing she thinks about is the money.”
Charles Polk of Monroe, N.C., completed the Recovery Connections program last year. He says the program’s director, Jennifer Warren, thinks only about money. Credit: James Nix for Reveal
Amid a nationwide opioid epidemic, treatment remains out of grasp for most people struggling with addiction. Those with wealth and insurance often are able to pay thousands of dollars for private long-term programs. But the less fortunate have become easy prey for rehabs with a tantalizing promise: freedom from addiction for free.
To pay for their stay, participants must work full-time jobs and surrender their pay. An ongoing investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found that many programs exploit this arrangement, providing few actual services while turning participants into indentured servants.
In North Carolina, Warren has turned her nonprofit rehabilitation program into her personal empire. She worked the people in her program to exhaustion, while regularly vacationing in places such as Paris, Greece and New Orleans for Mardi Gras, according to former participants and state records. She diverted nonprofit donations meant for the program – appointments at beauty salons and concert tickets – to herself and used participants’ food stamps to stock her own kitchen.
In addition to working at adult care homes, the 40 or so men and women in Warren’s program have baby-sat her children, cared for hundreds of her exotic pets and cleaned her house.
“It’s like slavery,” said Denise Cool, who was addicted to crack cocaine when a judge ordered her to the rehab in 2011, “like we were on the plantation.”
Jennifer Warren is shown in a 2015 booking photo after she was caught illegally collecting thousands of dollars’ worth of food stamps. Credit: Buncombe County Bureau of Identification
Even after being stripped of her counseling license in 2012, Warren continued to operate her program with impunity. Authorities from four separate state agencies neglected complaints, botched investigations and stood by for years as Warren flouted rules they were supposed to enforce.
It was not until Reveal questioned state officials about their inaction that they began taking steps to curb the abuses.
Warren, who is 52 years old, declined to answer questions from Reveal.
“I have no reason to believe that you will report anything positive about our program or are interested in the people’s success stories, of which there are many,” Warren wrote in an email.
When confronted by a former participant in a private Facebook message in February, Warren responded, “It’s so easy to buy into the negativity.”
“Because of the structure of this kind of program, many people leave with resentments and are disgruntled,” she wrote in the message, obtained by Reveal. “I have spent the majority of my adult life trying to give back.”
Founded in 2011, Recovery Connections Community has grown to include three locations, run from rural homes near Asheville and Raleigh.
Hundreds of people have sought help from Recovery Connections over the years. Many are sent there by the courts as an alternative to prison. Others come directly from hospitals, mental health facilities and state-funded detox centers.
Whitney Richardson was addicted to heroin and facing prison time for burglary when a North Carolina judge ordered her to complete the two-year program in 2014 as part of a plea agreement.
Judges and probation officers weren’t supposed to use unlicensed rehabs such as Recovery Connections for treatment. And the rehab specifically had been on probation officials’ radar. In internal emails, one official said it was “a bad agency and is run by dangerous people.”
Richardson fled four months later. She was so scarred by the experience that she vowed never to attend rehab again. When she later relapsed, she said she got herself clean by buying Suboxone on the street.
“It’s not right to take advantage and subject people to abuse like that when they’re trying to better their lives,” Richardson said. “No one should ever go to that place.”
***
Jennifer Warren – known then as Jennifer Hollowell – was working on a doctorate at the University of Alabama when she got hooked on crack cocaine.
She dropped out of her clinical psychology program and at 27 years old checked herself into a residential rehab program in Winston-Salem that required that she and other participants work for free.
Warren flourished in the rehab, becoming the director’s assistant once she graduated. “I wanted to be like her, and she became my role model,” she would later recall.
But in 2002, after the director left amid allegations that she had stolen money and – former employees said – dated a client, Warren and several other clients decided to start a program of their own. They called it Recovery Ventures.
With her flowing blond hair and colorful dresses, Warren projected the image of a free spirit. She described clients as family and would invite them to socialize in her home, which was adorned with fairy figurines and painted bright purple inside.
“She could just look at you and just read straight through you, I swear to God,” said former client Lakindra Edwards. “Like, wow. She don’t even know me, but she told me everything about me.”
But Warren soon began to cross ethical lines. She instructed her clients to clean her home and care for her growing collection of llamas, miniature ponies and exotic birds. Then she, too, began a romantic relationship in 2008 with a client she was counseling.
Phillip Warren would spend the night at her house, and they would kiss around other clients. Dating a participant violated a host of state ethics rules, but when friends and colleagues tried to intervene, Jennifer Warren crumpled into tears.
Undeterred, she moved up Phillip Warren’s graduation date and moved him into her house. The two married years later.
By 2011, multiple complaints about Jennifer Warren had reached the North Carolina professional licensing board. In the official document later filed against her, the board chastised her for her ethical breaches and said she wasn’t cut out for the rehab business. In fact, the more time patients spent around her, the licensing board wrote, the more likely they were to relapse.
Warren “used and exploited her clients for her personal benefit” and “failed to maintain appropriate boundaries between herself and her clients,” the board wrote. The state eventually revoked her counseling license.
The rehab fired her in 2011. A few days later, Warren struck out on her own, founding Recovery Connections. To pay for her program, she turned to a handful of employers always in need of workers: adult care homes.
***
Rachel Thomas was working one night in 2016 at Candler Living Center, a home near Asheville for mentally ill and disabled adults, when a worker from Jennifer Warren’s program came sprinting down the hall.
An elderly resident was gasping for air and repeatedly vomiting. Thomas discovered that the rehab worker – who was not trained to dispense prescription drugs – had given the patient the wrong medication.
“He actually about killed one of the residents,” said Thomas, who no longer works at Candler. “He had no idea what was going on.”
A former employee at Candler Living Center, a facility for mentally ill and disabled adults outside Asheville, N.C., contracted with Recovery Connections for workers. It houses nearly 30 residents. CREDIT: NANCY PIERCE FOR REVEAL
Participants from Recovery Connections worked in at least nine homes over the years. Some worked as janitors and cooks, but the majority worked as personal care aides.
In North Carolina, personal care aides must receive at least 80 hours of training, during which they learn how to safely feed, lift and bathe patients. But many rehab workers interviewed by Reveal said they never received the training required by law. Some Recovery Connections participants also dispensed medication with no training, even though state law requires a special certification.
“I would die if someone like that was taking care of my mom,” said Renee Thayer, a former program participant who was assigned to work as a personal care aide in 2012.
The rehab workers cost the facilities less than regular employees. Some homes paid Recovery Connections the minimum wage – $7.25 an hour – for each worker and did not pay workers’ compensation, insurance or overtime, according to former managers and internal records obtained by Reveal.
Disasters Happened All the Time
One employee at Hominy Valley Retirement Center would unlock the medicine cart and place pain pills into white paper cups. Then, rather than take the prescription drugs to the residents herself, she would order the rehab workers to pass out the pills while she slept on a recliner, said Charles Polk, a former participant who also dispensed the drugs.
“Lots of people relapsed and got high that way,” he said. “They stole the meds. They would just take it.”
Fentanyl pain patches, which slowly release an opioid up to 50 times more powerful than heroin, were in particularly high demand. When it was time to shower patients in chronic pain, some rehab workers would peel off the patches and keep them for themselves.
“They would take their patches off them and suck the fentanyl out,” said Ian Hays, a former manager at Recovery Connections. “One girl told me, ‘I got high every day in the fucking program.’ ”
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At least seven rehab workers have been accused of sexual assault or misconduct with patients at the homes. Former employees said none of the allegations were reported to authorities, as required by law. Reveal could find no mention of any of the alleged assaults in thousands of pages of police reports, Adult Protective Services records and county and state inspections. The accused continued working or simply were transferred to other facilities.
One male rehab worker was accused of sexually assaulting a disabled elderly woman in the shower at Candler in 2016. After the incident, the woman refused to let the rehab worker shower her.
“I don’t want him to do it!” she cried while pointing at the worker, recalled Polk, who witnessed the interaction.
In response, Candler barred male rehab workers from bathing female residents, according to seven current and former employees and participants. As of mid-May (2018), the man still was working at the home.
Chris Damiani, chief executive officer of the company that owns Candler and Hominy Valley, said his agency had never had problems with rehab workers. He said that none of the alleged assaults were reported to management and that his company was investigating the issues raised by Reveal’s reporting.
“We do not take any report of abuse, neglect, assault, theft or drug use lightly,” Damiani said.
Cedarbrook Residential Center, an assisted-living facility in Nebo, N.C., houses 80 residents and used workers from Recovery Connections Community. Credit: Nancy Pierce for Reveal
In 2014, another rehab worker was accused of sexually assaulting a disabled woman in her bedroom at Cedarbrook Residential Center, the woman and four former employees said.
She said she fought him off and immediately reported the incident, but the administrator “plumb out ignored me.”
“I hated the place,” said the woman, who left the facility in 2016. “I felt like I was literally in hell.”
Frederic Leonard, Cedarbrook’s owner, said the facility never filed a formal report with the county Department of Social Services because the facility conducted its own investigation and concluded that an assault had not occurred. He declined to provide more details about the internal investigation.
“We have safeguards in place to prevent misconduct of this type,” he said. “It is difficult when mentally ill adults, who are suffering from severe mental illness, are also poor historians of fact.”
The accused worker continued to work at the facility for several days. His presence terrified the patient who had accused him, she and a former employee said.
At Recovery Connections, Warren dealt with the alleged assault in her weekly therapy group. Rather than call police, she placed the man in the middle of a circle while his peers screamed at him and called him a sexual predator, according to two former participants.
“They all went off on him,” said Blake Loving, who attended the therapy session. “He just sat there.”
After the session, Warren sent the accused worker to another care home.
“It was really sick,” said Whitney Richardson, who also attended. “They just kind of wanted to brush it under the rug.”
***
Jennifer Warren collects a salary of about $65,000 a year, according to tax filings, but that money alone never seemed to be enough. For years, she has used her rehab’s nonprofit status as a vehicle for personal enrichment.
Every day, a group of Warren’s clients said they were expected to make hundreds of phone calls to businesses and major corporations asking them to donate goods and services, according to state records, former participants and staff. They asked Tommy Hilfiger for designer clothes, Hilton for hotel stays and The Cheesecake Factory for free meals. Warren used the nonprofit to score free concert tickets to see her favorite bands.
Jennifer Warren’s Trips
The donations were tax deductible and were supposed to go to program participants. But Warren got first pick of everything.
“Jennifer and them got all the good stuff,” said Jessica Stanley, who attended the rehab in 2016 and called businesses on the program’s behalf. “It was a little hustle-scam.”
Participants routinely called nail and hair salons to book free appointments. They said the salon visits would help rehab participants “build their self-esteem.” But Warren was the one who showed up.
“She was taking advantage of all the donated manicures and pedicures,” said Ian Hays, the former Recovery Connections manager. “She used to go to one place in the mall all the time.”
During one appointment, a hairstylist asked Warren how long she had been in the program, according to a former staff member who witnessed the interaction and records from a state investigation. When Warren admitted she was the founder, the stylist was livid.
Warren also ordered program participants to sign up for food stamps, which former participants said she used to stock her own kitchen.
In 2015, Warren pleaded guilty to financial assistance fraud for lying about her income and illegally collecting thousands of dollars’ worth of food stamps. She was sentenced to 45 days of probation. But participants say she continued to use their benefits to fill her personal pantry.
While Warren got steaks, participants said they often were left with little more than Hamburger Helper, crackers and tubs of peanut butter. At times, they complained there was no food at all.
“Sometimes we ate ramen noodles at night,” recalled Roshawnda McIllwain, a former participant who left the program last year. “Some days, I went hungry.”
But there was always money for animals.
Warren spent more than $32,000 in program funds on animal expenses, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings from 2014 and 2015.
She bought goats and sheep at animal auctions around the country. She had two arctic foxes, large ostrich-like birds called rheas and sugar gliders – small marsupials that resemble flying squirrels. Warren claimed they were for the rehab’s animal therapy program.
“Some people collect stamps. Some people collect shoes. Jennifer’s got a thing for collecting animals,” said Hays, the former manager.
Warren keeps dozens of them at her home in Black Mountain, participants said. Her bedroom is stacked with cages of toucans and other tropical birds.
At one of Recovery Connections’ outposts near Raleigh, an entire barn is crammed with animals, according to participants. Guinea pigs tumble over each other in crates. Rats multiply by the dozens. Inside a dimly lit garage, monkeys languish in cramped cages. Several participants recalled burying dead llamas in the program’s yard.
Even though the program had horses for its “equine therapy program,” participants said they weren’t allowed to ride them.
Julia Harris said she was struck with one thought when she checked herself into the program in 2017.
“I have landed in an insane asylum,” she remembers thinking. “I’m in a filthy house with animals and animal fur. And this is supposed to be a rehab?”
Julia Harris, pictured at her home near Brevard, N.C., said she was struck with one thought when she arrived at Recovery Connections last year for help with an alcohol problem: “I have landed in an insane asylum.” Credit: James Nix for Reveal
***
For some people, the worst part of Jennifer Warren’s program was not the work at the care homes or the personal chores – it was the therapy groups.
The sessions usually occurred at Warren’s house. The group sat in a large circle of folding chairs and loveseats while each person took a turn in “the hot seat” in the middle. The other patients then cursed, screamed and hurled insults at the person for up to 45 minutes at a time.
Spoiled brat.
Stupid bitch.
Motherfucking whore.
Participation was mandatory. People frequently broke down crying. Some participants said Warren and others seemed to relish it.
“You see certain people planning this shit all week, looking for stuff to use against you,” said Scott Hucks, who left the program in 2016. “It’s like a joke, it’s like a game. Just entertainment.”
Sometimes, Warren would black out the windows and keep a select group awake for days on end as they recited their life stories. If anyone started to doze off, participants said they were sprayed with water. Some people said they began to hallucinate.
“It’s like CIA torture,” said Heather Fox, who left the program last year.
Warren said the groups were meant to teach participants conflict resolution skills. They learned how to confront the harshest realities of their lives and move past it, she explained in a deposition for a 2010 lawsuit brought by a client who found her first rehab, Recovery Ventures, abusive.
“I wouldn’t say it’s verbal abuse,” she said. “It’s an incredible healing opportunity.”
“Is there screaming involved?” the lawyer asked her.
“Sometimes,” Warren replied.
Warren’s therapeutic tactics are rooted in a drug rehab program called Synanon, which was founded in 1958. Studies have shown that the group sessions, which involve screaming and insults, can be catastrophic for people with poor mental health and low self-esteem. Law enforcement officials later denounced the program as a cult.
Most participants interviewed by Reveal said they found Warren’s therapy sessions humiliating. Those who complained were punished with more work. They were forced to scrub floors with a toothbrush or cut grass with a pair of scissors.
“They wanted us to be so broken down emotionally that we would listen to whatever they said,” said Heather Teatzner-Brown, who attended the rehab for alcohol addiction and fled in the middle of the night in 2016. “Just take it and not have an opinion or your own mind.”
Some former participants interviewed by Reveal spoke positively about the program, saying Warren and her rehab were there for them when no one else was.
“If you’re at a crossroads in your life and you’ve burned up every bridge out there, it’s the best way,” said Rick Taylor, who graduated in 2014 and credits it with helping him overcome a drug addiction. “All I had to do was just surrender and do what I was told.”
Others left the program worse off than when they arrived. Some turned to drugs to cope. Many participants told Reveal that they fled into the mountains, sometimes in the rain or snow or in the middle of the night.
“I was physically sober, but my mind was way worse than it ever was before when I was using,” recalled Tommy Farwick, who attended the program in 2012. “I had zero desire to live anymore. I just wanted to die.”
Through all this, Warren demanded that people work around the clock because the more they worked, the more money they brought in for the rehab.
“Y’all need to make some money,” Hays recalled her saying.
***
North Carolina regulators were well aware of the abuse at Recovery Connections.
Soon after Jennifer Warren opened in 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services received a complaint alleging that she was operating an unlicensed rehab program, in violation of state law. In North Carolina, any facility offering 24-hour treatment is required to be licensed.
When investigator Joy Allison arrived at Recovery Connections to check it out, Warren greeted her warmly. Even though Warren was advertising her program as “substance abuse treatment” online and in brochures, she told Allison a different story: She was running halfway houses, not a treatment program.
Allison accepted that explanation and then offered Warren a tip: If she said she was operating a “12-step, self-help” program, Warren could avoid state oversight completely. Warren used the new language on promotional materials but changed little else.
Seven years later, that decision continues to allow Warren to operate her rehab free of government oversight. But the complaints haven’t stopped: forced labor, self-dealing and abuse.
Each time, Allison gave the same answer. “I have continued to receive calls/complaints about this program but, have explained that they are exempt from licensure,” she wrote in an internal email in 2016.
After questions from Reveal, the state health department finally began to crack down.
On May 16th 2018 it banned Recovery Connections from sending participants to work as caregivers at adult care homes, potentially cutting off the program’s main source of funding. The department said Recovery Connections must be licensed as a staffing agency to continue dispatching workers.
But the department said the program still is not required to be licensed as a drug rehab center.
Recovery Connections has escaped accountability from other state agencies as well.
Since 2011, the North Carolina secretary of state’s office has received complaints that Warren has pocketed donations meant for the program. Its investigators conducted a full investigation, speaking with business owners who had been defrauded by Warren and reviewing internal call logs and financial documents.
But the agency ultimately dropped the case. Its reason: Participants never sent officials signed and notarized affidavits.
Recovery Connections got to keep its charitable solicitation license and nonprofit status, which allows Warren to continue to collect tax-deductible donations from businesses and the public.
In exasperated emails to authorities, the directors of several licensed rehab centers expressed their dismay that Warren kept dodging accountability.
“This individual believes that the rules do not apply to her, no matter how many warnings or disciplinary actions are taken,” David Martin, who had co-founded Warren’s first rehab with her, wrote to the attorney general’s office in a July 2012 email.
Martin ticked off her latest transgression. Warren “spent the entire month of June at the beach” and used the rehab’s food stamps for herself, he wrote. Was this something the attorney general would pursue?
An investigator promised to look into it, but nothing came of it.
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety had its turn to crack down around the same time. Probation officers began hearing complaints in 2012 from people who had been ordered by the court to go to Recovery Connections.
In internal emails, probation officials agreed that the program was unsuitable for offenders and griped about Warren’s sordid history. But they continued to allow probationers to attend.
“We are not responsible for policing the agencies available to the offenders,” one administrator wrote in an internal email.
Following questions from Reveal, probation officials finally took action against the rehab.
“We have determined that the Recovery Connections locations do not align with our mission, vision, or goals,” the department wrote in a May 8 memo (2018). Going forward, no probationer will be allowed there.
But hospitals and short-term treatment centers continue to send people to the program. So do social workers at state-funded detox and psychiatric facilities. Recovery Connections is always willing to accept those who have nowhere else to go.
Jennifer Warren is waiting for them.
More from the All Work. No Pay. series Read: Impact: Officials take action on rehab work camp in response to Reveal investigation Read: They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants Read: Inside a judge’s rehab: Unpaid work at a local Coca-Cola plant Read: Response to work camp investigation: ‘Nothing short of slavery’
By: Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter, Reveal Title: She Said She’d Free Them From Addiction. She Turned Them Into Her Personal Servants Sourced From: www.thefix.com/she-said-she-d-free-them-addiction-she-turned-them-her-personal-servants Published Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 07:52:33 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Before the coronavirus became a pandemic, Emma went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting every week in the Boston area and to another support group at her methadone clinic. She said she felt safe, secure and never judged.
“No one is thinking, ‘Oh, my God. She did that?’” said Emma, “’cause they’ve been there.”
Now, with AA and other 12-step groups moving online, and the methadone clinic shifting to phone meetings and appointments, Emma said she is feeling more isolated. (KHN is not using her last name because she still uses illegal drugs sometimes.) Emma said the coronavirus may make it harder to stay in recovery.
“Maybe I’m old fashioned,” said Emma, “but the whole point of going to a meeting is to be around people and be social and feel connected, and I’d be totally missing that if I did it online.”
While it’s safer to stay home to avoid getting and spreading COVID-19, addiction specialists acknowledge Emma’s concern: Doing so may increase feelings of depression and anxiety among people in recovery — and those are underlying causes of drug and alcohol use and addiction.
“We consider addiction a disease of isolation,” said Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. “Now we’re isolating all these people and expecting them to pick up the phone, get online, that sort of thing — and it may not work out as well.”
Emma has another frustration: If the methadone clinic isn’t allowing gatherings, why is she still required to show up daily and wait in line for her dose of the pink liquid medication?
The answer is in tangled rules for methadone dispensing. The federal government has loosened them during the pandemic — so that patients don’t all have to make a daily trip to the methadone clinic, even if they are sick. But patients say clinics have been slow to adopt the new rules.
Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, said he issued guidelines to members late last week about how to operate during pandemics. He recommended that clinics stop collecting urine samples to test for drug use. Many patients can now get a 14- to 28-day supply of their addiction treatment medication so they can make fewer trips to methadone or buprenorphine clinics.
“But there has to be caution about giving significant take-home medication to patients who are clinically unstable or actively still using other drugs,” Parrino said, “because that could lead to more problems.”
The new rules have a downside for clinics: Programs will lose money during the pandemic as fewer patients make daily visits, although Medicare and some other providers are adjusting reimbursements based on the new stay-at-home guidelines.
And for active drug users, being alone when taking high levels of opioids increases the risk of a fatal overdose.
These are just some of the challenges that emerge as the public health crisis of addiction collides with the global pandemic of COVID-19. Doctors worry deaths will escalate unless people struggling with excessive drug and alcohol use and those in recovery — as well as addiction treatment programs — quickly change the way they do business.
But treatment options are becoming even scarcer during the pandemic.
“It’s shutting down everything,” said John, a homeless man who’s wandering the streets of Boston while he waits for a detox bed. (KHN is not including his last name because he still buys illegal drugs.) “Detoxes are closing their doors and halfway houses,” he said. “It’s really affecting people getting help.”
Adding to the scarcity of treatment options: Some inpatient and outpatient programs are not accepting new patients because they aren’t yet prepared to operate under the physical distancing rules. In many residential treatment facilities, bedrooms and bathrooms for patients are shared, and most daily activities happen in groups — those are all settings that would increase the risk of transmitting the novel coronavirus.
“If somebody were to become symptomatic or were to spread within a unit, it would have a significant impact,” said Lisa Blanchard, vice president of clinical services at Spectrum Health Systems. Spectrum runs two detox and residential treatment programs in Massachusetts. Its facilities and programs are all still accepting patients.
Seppala said inpatient programs at Hazelden Betty Ford are open, but with new precautions. All patients, staff and visitors have their temperature checked daily and are monitored for other COVID-19 symptoms. Intensive outpatient programs will run on virtual platforms online for the immediate future. Some insurers cover online and telehealth addiction treatment, but not all do.
Seppala worried that all the disruptions — canceled meetings, the search for new support networks and fear of the coronavirus — will be dangerous for people in recovery.
“That can really drive people to an elevated level of anxiety,” he said, “and anxiety certainly can result in relapse.”
Doctors say some people with a history of drug and alcohol use may be more susceptible to COVID-19 because they are more likely to have weak immune systems and have existing infections such as hepatitis C or HIV.
“They also have very high rates of nicotine addiction and smoking, and high rates of chronic lung disease,” said Dr. Peter Friedmann, president of the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine. “Those [are] things we’ve seen in the outbreak in China [that] put folks at higher risk for more severe respiratory complications of this virus.”
Counselors and street outreach workers are redoubling their efforts to explain the pandemic and all the related dangers to people living on the streets. Kristin Doneski, who runs One Stop, a needle exchange and outreach program in Gloucester, Massachusetts, worried it won’t be clear when some drug users have COVID-19.
“When folks are in withdrawal, a lot of those symptoms can kind of mask some of the COVID-19 stuff,” said Doneski. “So people might not be taking some of their [symptoms seriously], because they think it’s just withdrawal and they’ve experienced it before.”
Doneski is concerned that doctors and nurses evaluating drug users will also mistake a case of COVID-19 for withdrawal.
During the coronavirus pandemic, needle exchange programs are changing their procedures; some have stopped allowing people to gather inside for services, safety supplies, food and support.
There’s also a lot of fear about how quickly the coronavirus could spread through communities of drug users who’ve lost their homes.
“It’s scary to see how this will pan out,” said Meredith Cunniff, a nurse from Quincy, Massachusetts, who is in recovery for an opioid use disorder. “How do you wash your hands and practice social distancing if you’re living in a tent?”
This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News.
By: Martha Bebinger, WBUR Title: Addiction Is ‘A Disease Of Isolation’ — So Pandemic Puts Recovery At Risk Sourced From: www.thefix.com/addiction-disease-isolation-so-pandemic-puts-recovery-risk Published Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2020 07:09:47 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
Erin Khar is an award-winning writer known for her deeply personal essays on addiction, recovery, mental health, parenting and self-care. “Ask Erin,” her weekly Ravishly column, attracts more than 500K unique readers per month. Her work is published in SELF, Marie Claire, Redbook, and anthologies including Lilly Dancyger’s Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger. Her first full-length memoir, Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me (Park Row Books, February 25), will be released this month.
Khar’s intro to opioids came in pill form at age eight. It was the year her parents split up. In Strung Out she writes, “My Dad had moved out and my mother drifted from room to room in our old Spanish house with a weightlessness that I could tell threatened to take her away.”
Khar suffered from overwhelming feelings that she didn’t understand. “A panic spread across my chest, filling my body with heat, trapping me. I ran to the bathroom and locked the door. As I reminded myself to breathe, some instinct led me to the medicine cabinet.”
With anxiety pounding, the third grader fumbled past Band-Aids and Tylenol and found her grandmother’s bottle of Darvocet, which warned: “May Cause Drowsiness and Dizziness.” She wanted so badly to stop hurting, she popped a big red pill into her mouth, then gulped from the faucet to wash it down. The burning heat of anxiety soon gave way to a “lightness of little bubbles.” Erin felt like she might float out of her body; this was the escape she’d yearned for.
Strung Out depicts one person’s journey against the backdrop of America’s opioid crisis. The book is written in gorgeous, accessible prose. Candor and vulnerability come through in a natural, believable voice, conveying what many trauma survivors know intimately: pain, anxiety, rage, depression.
Khar tried heroin for the first time at age 13. Her boyfriend described it as a much better high. It also proved to be the quickest route to forgetting: When Khar was four, a teen boy began molesting her. The abuse continued for years. Like many survivors, Khar told no one and desperately tried to block it from her mind.
“I needed to be somewhere else, someone else,” Khar told The Fix.
Strung Out is a page-turner that follows the progression of addiction: Narcotics seem like a magical solution until the relief morphs into a monster roaring for more. Opioids are now responsible for 47,000 deaths per year—that’s nearly two-thirds of all drug-related deaths in the U.S.
Reading Khar’s book felt like listening to a confidante, a kindred spirit who “got me.” We sat down in a New York City garden to talk about the hell of addiction and colossal relief of long-term recovery.
What idea sparked this book?
I wrote Strung Out because it was the book I wish I’d had when I was younger. I want to open up the conversation. Why do people take drugs? And why can’t they stop? The more we talk about it the more we can get rid of the stigma and shame surrounding it. Many people still don’t seem to understand addiction. I want to encourage empathy and compassion and give people hope.
I love that your then 12-year-old son asked if you ever did drugs. Can you tell me about that?
At first, I pretended I didn’t hear him. [Laughs] I tried not to cringe at my deflection.
I stalled by saying, “That’s a complicated question.” I didn’t know what to say. I did use drugs. A lot of them. Heroin was on and off from 13 to 28. That’s when I got pregnant with him. But how much should I tell him? I’d smoked crack, done acid, taken Ecstasy.
You describe childhood guilt and shame vividly. Looking back, do you think that was rage turned inward?
Oh yeah. It definitely had to do with early trauma. All I knew then was a nagging feeling. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I came to terms with everything. Before that, I minimized what happened to me, trying to shove [memories] aside. It took a long time for me to see that my therapist was right: my anger had sublimated into guilt.
Do you look back now and understand your feelings of shame?
Yes. I took responsibility for things because it gave me the feeling that I was in control. Can anyone process that kind of childhood trauma all in one go? I don’t know. Maybe it takes a lifetime to process? Maybe I’m still processing it.
Do you get triggered due to PTSD?
Yes. Even though I’ve done a lot of work on myself, I still have hypervigilance. My body reacts strongly to some situations, like if I’m startled by something, and especially if I’m asleep.
Can you describe things that helped? Especially for anyone who is trying but can’t stop using.
The first thing was accepting that I wasn’t going to be fixed overnight. Then it was forgiving myself for relapsing constantly. For me, whatever I’m dealing with, if I break it down into small, digestible increments, it’s a lot easier to handle. Focusing on the big picture is not helpful. That’s why they say a day at a time.
How did you stop relapsing?
By being honest about relapses. When I was in a 12-step program, I had so much shame. It was detrimental to worry about being judged at meetings. [Some] people in AA seemed pissed off when you relapsed. I get that it’s upsetting but have a little fucking compassion. [So] I hid relapses, which made it a lot easier to do it again. Finally, I was honest about [chronically] relapsing and that helped me stop. You do not have to relapse. It’s not a requirement of recovery but I don’t think that we unlearn things in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days or a year. I don’t think it happens that quickly. For anyone who struggles with addiction, we want immediate relief.
Like pushing a button?
Yes. I wanted to be numb. Stop thinking. In recovery, my biggest life lessons were learning to have patience, be honest, and work on accepting things I have no control over.
Did you find things easier when you began opening up?
First, I had to get through my fear that people were always judging me. It took work. I wouldn’t say it was easy but yes, I did get better.
How do you feel about your upbringing now?
I definitely don’t blame my parents for any of the choices I made. Even the choices when I was really young. I hid the sexual abuse and my depression from them. I hid my suicidal feelings. If my parents had stayed together and everything had been perfect, I may still have hid things. It may be a function of my personality.
Today I have a really good relationship with both of my parents and they have a really good friendship with each other. I will forever be grateful that no matter what happened, through everything I did, they never turned their backs on me. I have a very different idea about tough love than I used to. When I was first trying to get sober, the general idea of interventions and dealing with somebody who was addicted was this hard line of tough love.
I used to deal with people that way. But now, I really don’t think it works. That doesn’t mean that you should enable people. But, for me, I was lucky. Despite everything I had done to my parents—years of lying and stealing—our family connection remained. That door was still open when I finally asked for help.
By: Dorri Olds Title: Strung Out: An Interview with Erin Khar Sourced From: www.thefix.com/strung-out-interview-erin-khar Published Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2020 07:24:14 +0000
At New Horizon Drug Rehab, we understand addiction. If you or a family member are afflicted with addiction or substance abuse we can help. We work with the top centers throughout the US to provide the best detox and addiction treatments available.
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