At-home drug rehab program claims success
Michael Seaver, who has been sober since 1985, believes recovery services should be able to fit into your everyday life, not remove someone from their daily stresses.
Seaver is a clinical care manager at Aware Recovery Care, a home-based drug treatment program that started seeing patients in Rhode Island in August 2021.
Q: How is home-based therapy is more suitable for some clients?
Seaver: If you look at the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, going back to the mid-1930s, there weren’t any church basements. Everything was done in homes. At the time, it was bragging about a 75 percent success rate if someone stayed involved for a year. But if you look at the statistics today, researchers are finding that 90 percent of those in [seeking out treatment] are failing and relapsing. The owners at Aware Recovery looked at this and said, what was it that made Alcoholics Anonymous so successful and why isn’t it like that anymore? It was the home.
We can claim that if someone stays with us for 52 weeks in our in-home addiction program, 60 percent of people are going to be sober. That’s a figure that’s been really unheard of since the 1930s.
How does Aware Recovery work?
Every patient needs to be diagnosed with a substance abuse disorder. But we have four main teams who are working with these patients. Overall, we will see a patient twice a week for an entire year. That’s 104 times. [Services range from a virtual family wellness department to support loved ones, care coordinators, certified recovery advisers, and psychiatrists.] If they want it, we’ll also connect families to a licensed family therapist and give them four sessions included in the program.
Does the client get a say in how their program works?
Everything we do is individualized. We find out what the clients need, and they are engaged in every step in the development plan. We want their input. We don’t want to make them fit into the program, we want to fit into their life. We want people to be comfortable in their own homes.
How is this different from the traditional model?
Going away to a treatment center can be traumatic. I was the product of that environment. I had to leave my family for a month, my job, my friends, my entire support system. I’m away for 30 days but nothing changed outside, back to my real world. I’m returning right back to their environment. We don’t want to take people out of their environment, but give them services right in their regular lives. And it makes a difference. You hear the phrase “client-centered care” thrown around a lot because they think it’s what people want to hear. But in traditional settings, clients are thrown into a group and there’s a curriculum. A lot of the times, the curriculum doesn’t match up with what the client needs.
Who might be a good candidate?
It’s difficult if someone doesn’t have a home to get back to. But we’ve been known, in Connecticut in particular, to serve a family who lived in a tent. So the exclusionary criteria is pretty slim.
How many clients has Aware Recovery served in Rhode Island?
We started in August 2021. We currently have more than 100 active clients and we’ve graduated about 50 clients. So in less than two years, we’ve affected more than 150 families in Rhode Island.
Can you compare the cost of a home-based therapy to more traditional models?
We’re a bargain compared to traditional models. Some of the more popular treatment programs can run $50,000 per month. [Seaver declined to provide specific cost details.] In Rhode Island, our services are covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island. But we are not covered by any other insurance companies.
Does Aware Recovery have any services for people after they complete the one-year program?
We have an alumni program that allows people to come in and continue sharing their story. . . . The program is really robust.
What challenges does Aware Recovery face this year?
Before the pandemic, of all the patients we served, about 70 percent were for opiate use and 30 percent were for alcohol use disorder. What happened as a result of the pandemic is that those numbers have flipped. Last month [in March], about 80 percent of our patients are due to alcohol use disorder, 10 percent for opiate use disorder, and 10 percent for other substances. So right now, we’re trying to figure out how we can get opiate dependent clients back on board and figure out why they don’t want to seek treatment. The biggest thing we hear is that people are terrified of withdrawing, even if it’s not [typically] deadly.