Locals continue fight against ‘Crystal’
Recovering addicts add tasks to the goals of the Meth Alliance.
Everyone knows who Crystal is by now, right?
After all, this personification of one of the darkest corner of human existence has been around for a good while now, well dug into life as Polk County experiences it. From the courthouse to the hospital, people have gotten firsthand experience with Crystal, especially those who get tangled up in the storm clouds that trail behind this existence.
Life revolves around Crystal for those well acquainted. Its the most devastating and intimate relationship a person can have. And what’s worse, no one ever really loves Crystal. They just become dependent. First there’s the new shiny feeling of something different, but then that shine wears off. And in the wake of destruction caused as the relationship grows harder each passing moment to break away from, Crystal merely continues to move forward from person to place without any care about who is touched and what consequences come as a result.
Crystal has been in Polk County for a long time. Everyone keeps trying hard to push Crystal out, but it is a constant battle. Eradication isn’t in Crystal’s vocabulary. Mainly because Crystal lives on the streets, on dirty and stained couches in the living room of a single wide in the trailer park down the road. Even in the nicest of homes, hiding behind locked doors in bedrooms where the children can’t see comings and goings of a deadly epidemic. Everywhere someone goes, there is Crystal.
Crystal is one of the score of street names for a drug prevalent in Polk County, one local leaders are learning more about each time they gather at New Hope Baptist Church in Cedartown.
Methamphetamines negatively impact lives on a 24hour basis. From the health impacts users face over long term use due to addiction to the people who find themselves the victims of theft at the hands of those trying to score a quick buck to feed their habit, meth is both a problem on an individual and societal level. No one is immune from the drug, not even those who have no idea what it looks like.
The latest meeting of local officials seeking to tackle the meth problem gave those who am at the center of trying to help more information to process, but has not yet begun the discussions of what to do about curtailing methamphetamine trafficking and addiction in the community. Polk County Commission chair Jennifer Hulsey — who for the time being remains the organizer of the group — first gave local Department of Family and children’s Services Director Susan Ollis the opportunity to highlight damage being done to families due to drug addiction.
Ollis pointed to numbers previously presented to the Standard Journal by Juvenile Court Judge Mark Murphy, who is now involved in an effort to establish a Family Drug Court in Polk County. She pointed out as Murphy did that Polk County is seeing a rising number of children being removed from their homes and care of their parents and into foster care around the state due to drug dependency.
Of the doubling in the past two years of the number of children in state custody and subsequent foster care, some 86 percent of those were due to drug addiction issues on the part of the parents. Within that number, 78 percent of those who have lost their children have been due to methamphetamines.
As of the end of the year in 2017, 88 more children had been removed from their parents care and into that of a family member or guardian willing to take them in, into a foster family’s care, or into state or privately run non-profit facilities like the Murphy Harpst Children’s Center here in Polk County.
Polk County is among the higher levels in the state of children who end up outside of the area in foster care, with at least 41 percent of youth in the state system being placed elsewhere in the state. Mainly due to the fact that, as both Ollis and previously Murphy have pointed out, that it is impossible sometimes to find family members who can take a child that aren’t also suffering from a substance abuse problem. Additionally, the organization heard again from Wrayanne Parker, Women’s Program Coordinator with the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities in the office of addictive disease, who again underscored the lack of treatment resources available locally for addicts to utilize when they do decide to seek help.
Backing up that point were several representatives from Highland Rivers Health, who also said they need resources beyond what they already have to properly cover all those who want to get clean. Additionally, members of the latest group seeking to tackle the problems facing Polk County over drug addiction and trafficking also heard from a Floyd County law enforcement officer who has undertaken his own efforts in the community to the north.
Floyd County Sheriff Tim Burkhalter told those in attendance that his efforts at both tackling drugs and also the spread of gang activity in his area of responsibility had some positive gains, but that it was going to be an effort of facing down the problem one person at a time. He cited his own experience as head of the Sheriff’s office and the Floyd County Jail counseling addicts to get help, and said that the work being done in Polk County can make a difference, even if it only touches one life.
Polk’s newest attempt at a Meth Alliance did get to a potential starting point as former addicts who have sought help provided their own take on the issue.
DFCS’ Robin Forston brought along several recovering addicts to speak to the group about how they were able to get off the drug, and what ideas they might propose to help others.
Those who spoke did call upon the group to find ways to provide more resources and recovery meetings like Narcotic’s Anonymous at set places and times, since currently there is no real organization of meetings.
As it stands, there are several meetings in Polk County but not on set schedules or locations, with the exception of the Celebrate Recovery meeting in Rockmart on a weekly basis.
The group agreed a good starting point would be to gather together a better list of meetings to have available to those who are recovering.
Additionally though, they also said the community as a whole has to overcome a stigma that is placed upon recovering addicts, and to remember each journey through the stages of shedding Crystal, or opioids, or other drugs from their lives is both personal and requires individual tailoring. Since no one 12-step recovery program works for all, the former addicts hoped that some effort would be made to consider that problem when the Meth Alliance seeks to increase the range of resources available.
Those who spoke out at the meeting also provided a clear message to law enforcement about how they felt when they were on the drugs about facing court and jail time.
Polk County Police Chief Kenny Dodd asked several of those in attendance whether when they were already charged and let out of jail and then get caught again with drugs if that made any impact. One of those addicts told Dodd that he’d been charged four different times before he finally saw the light and began to fight against his addiction. Another said she “got out of jail, got my car back and then immediately went searching for drugs again,” after she was charged with possession of methamphetamines.
Hulsey gave the group a clear goal, and some hope for possible financial help in the battle. She asked attendees to list three things they learned from the latest session, and provide some ideas of ways the group might seek to combat the hold Crystal has on Polk County residents. She also additionally pointed out that much of the funding for such undertakings is now being handled for rural communities like Polk County by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and their grant programs, and that officials would work to see what money might be available for addiction treatment programs.
But Crystal isn’t going to wait for officials to find a solution. The toll on local lives will continue to grow for the time being as the unfolding saga of addiction to methamphetamines plays out in Polk County.