Crossroads Recovery Center brings support to the area
Facility promotes sober living, support at home
Arlene Brown, founder and CEO of Crossroads Recovery Center, which recently opened in Bishop, said the goal of the facility is provide the support and resources for those dealing with substance abuse that have lacking or nonexistent in the past.
Brown said that she and co-founder Steven Dondero, also from
Bishop, saw creating the center as “making our community a better place and being able to help others in need.”
Brown said the center, which had been in the works for a few years, came about because individuals and families in Eastern Sierra communities need more support and “low-barrier care” when it comes to the devastating impacts substance abuse has on their lives.
Brown said “low-barrier care” refers to removing obstacles to substance abuse treatment, such as a lack of health coverage, a lack of resources or where to find them and the stigma attached to those seeking help.
The center plans on opening a sober living home in January to provide
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additional support..
“Because we don’t have in-patient detox or a sober living facility, people here have to go away to get those services,” Brown said. “And when they come home, there’s nothing in place for them. Then they return to the same environment.”
Crossroads is about giving people a place “to put recovery support services around them and then to give them a safe, sober living environment,” she said.
The center also provides harm-reduction services for overdose prevention as well, she said.
Brown said the center provides one-on-one substance abuse counseling as well as family counseling.
She said a sober living home will soon be opening in Bishop, probably in January, and the plan is to have 14 beds total with seven for female clients and seven for male clients. The home will be fore those 18 years and older and will be open to everyone.
Brown said the center does “a lot of overdoes prevention” through education, awareness and harm-reduction services.
Harm reduction is a practical and transformative approach that incorporates community-driven
public health strategies – including prevention, risk reduction and health promotion – to empower people who use drugs, and their families, with the choice to live healthy, selfdirected and purposefilled lives. Harm reduction centers the lived and living experience of people who use drugs, especially those in underserved communities, in these strategies and the practices that flow from them.
Fentanyl in Bishop Brown said while some people hold onto the myth that fentanyl, a synthetic opioid with a high risk for addiction and dependence, is an urban problem, rural areas, including places like Bishop also have been impacted by the crisis.
“We have a lot of substance abuse in Bishop,” Brown said. “We have people who accidentally get fentanyl and we have people who seek fentanyl as a drug of choice. We have stimulants that are laced with fentanyl, counterfeit pills that are laced with fentanyl as well. Fentanyl is a major problem here.”
“It’s a synthetic opioid, which means it’s cheaper to manufacture so its accessible and it’s highly, highly addictive.”
Brown said as the medical industry curbed its over prescription of pain medications, such as Oxycontin, people who had become addicted to prescribed medications found themselves seeking out fentanyl.
Brown said the situation is the latest “wave” of opioid abuse. The Centers for Disease Control notes the “interconnected waves that are diving America’s opioid overdose epidemic include: an increase in deaths from prescription opioid overdoses since the 1990s, an increase in heroin deaths starting in 2010, and a more recent surge in deaths from “illicitly manufactured fentanyl.”
Brown said one of the reasons that it’s important to have resources like Cross Roads Recovery is because fentanyl “is a larger problem than what people think.”
Brown said while the physical building for the facility, at 536 W. Line St., Unit A, Bishop, recently had its grand opening, Crossroads in Bishop has been providing mobile outreach for more than a year. She said the mobile outreach services continue as well.
She said the center is where counselling occurs and where people “can just walk in – it’s that safe space for people in recovery.”
Brown said the center also helps people get to rehabilitation services.
She said the ultimate goal of the center is to reduce the stigma around substance abuse and help people get beyond the challenges that are blocking their paths to recovery, which could include insurances, intake paperwork, and/or service providers making people jump through multiple hoops before people can get access to care.
“That’s the biggest thing – that people have access to peer-support services instantly,” Brown said of the local center. “If people walk in, in crisis, or whatever the situation is, they have access to be able to talk to someone in real time.”
“We’re here to meet people right where they’re at, which is super important” Brown said. “We want to give them dignity and respect and to help them.”
For more information about Crossroads
Recovery Center, call Brown, (760) 937-4270.