‘The myth is that willpower is what’s needed’
Support groups, businesses take on addiction stigma
Even in Taos County, the population of which, according to the state Department of Health, ranks among the top 10, or even top five New Mexico counties for severity of many substance use disorders, opening a behavioral health treatment facility is challenging.
Beyond the regulatory and licensing requirements, staffing difficulties and funding hurdles, the stigma of addiction and recovery has sometimes made governments and the public hesitant to support treatment centers, despite the demonstrated need for them.
In 2015, several years before it permanently went out of business due to financial problems, Tri-County Community Services was forced to shut down its nonmedical social detox facility at 1421 Weimer Rd., purportedly due to a broken furnace. The facility had operated for more than 20 years and was originally built to purpose, according to Steve Fuhlendorf.
Fuhlendorf, who is community coordinator with RecoveryFriendly Taos County, a decadeold organization that seeks to coordinate and mobilize community resources to reduce the barriers created by prejudice and shame related to substance use disorders “to overcome stigma, provide access to services and support individual, family and community recovery,” did at least one stint in the Weimer Road facility.
“My [sobriety] journey started in the detox center here in Taos back in 2001,” Fuhlendorf said. “Alcohol and drugs are powerful; and it is many-times very hard to resist that disease. But just as I had cancer twice, sometimes there are going to be relapses. And the biggest thing? It’s not to write that person off, but to keep supporting them and helping them get back on the path.”
Seven years later, the recovery community’s push to reopen the facility has found a hard row to hoe. After much wrangling with the Town of Taos’s previous administration — former Town Manager Rick Bellis repeatedly expressed opposition to the proposed revamp of the facility, which he said would be unlikely to prove financially-viable — Rio Grande ATP was finally awarded a special-use permit from the town and projected the detox center would reopen in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, they said, thwarted those plans.
But as soon as the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration signs off on a recent property transaction agreement between Taos, which still owns the building, and Taos County, the county will reissue a request for proposals in order to contract with a company to run the detox facility.
“I would just say that we’re very
glad that we have a new [Town of Taos] administration that is focusing on recovery in the Taos community and is working with us to build our resources,” Fuhlendorf said.
Although many families in Taos and elsewhere in the United States experience the impacts of the disease of addiction, Stigma can also hinder those experiencing substance use disorders from seeking treatment and entering recovery.
“There are many paths to recovery, and we do have paths to recovery here,” Fuhlendorf said. “The myth is that willpower is what’s needed; Recovery-Friendly Taos County is a very easy entry place to be able to talk with people with lived experience, people who have been there and found recovery themselves.
“It’s the greatest thing that somebody who is needing recovery can have,”Fuhlendorf said. “Somebody who has already been there, and has already found their way on the path of recovery. We’re always glad to help anyone we can.”
Fuhlendorf is also community coordinator with Rio Grande Alcoholism Treatment Program, with which Recovery-Friendly Taos County is affiliated. His longtime peer, Lawrence Medina, said people simply need to learn different ways of thinking about people who are experiencing substance use disorders.
“There’s a big movement nationwide, from grassroots to corporate America on DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion,” which is a mindset similar to how people should approach people with substance use disorders, said Medina, who is the executive director of Rio Grande Alcoholism Treatment Program. Rio Grande ATP has offered treatment options for those experiencing substance use disorder in North-Central New Mexico since the late 1970s.
“By utilizing evidence-based
prevention and early intervention strategies to ensure youth and the public understand the dangers of substance use and where to find help, if they’re struggling,” he said, “and if we get beyond the stigma, then it’s OK to ask for help. We have the treatment.”
Medina, who himself is 31 years sober, is trying to spread the word: Addiction, like diabetes and depression, is a chronic health condition, “not a moral failing.”
Yet, “discrimination towards individuals with a SUD or in recovery can be found in healthcare services and quality, employment opportunities, decisions around child custody, and housing,” Medina added.
In an international study, the World Health Organization found that among highly-stigmatized conditions — such as homelessness or being HIV positive — substance use disorder was the most stigmatized condition, with alcoholism coming in fourth.
The proliferation of opioidbased painkillers by major pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma, followed by the advent of black market fentanyl and resulting opioid overdose epidemic, has made substance use disorder a hard-to-ignore fact of life for many families in the U.S., as well as the elected officials who represent them.
In her Jan. 1 inaugural speech, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said, “Every New Mexican is entitled to achieve freedom from addiction and mental illness,” and indicated she wants the Legislature to streamline access to health- and behavioral-health care in the state.
“We will approach opioid addiction as the epidemic it is, fighting tooth and nail to provide life-saving services to victims and families who have been torn apart by this horrific disease,” Lujan Grisham said. “We must approach the expansion of behavioral health care — including substance abuse treatment — as an urgent moral priority.”
To streamline that approach, Lujan Grisham said in her fifth State of the State Address during the opening day of the Legislature on Tuesday (Jan. 17), that she wants legislators to “create the New Mexico Health Care Authority, an innovative initiative that puts all our healthcare services under one roof and brings us a step closer to universal health care in New Mexico,” which is “the only state where more than half the population is on Medicaid, including 80 percent of children.”
Taos will soon be home to two facilities that accept Medicaid and Medicare: the Taos Countyowned detox facility and a new treatment facility at the site of the former Days Inn at 1333 Paseo Pueblo del Sur.
“There has been a tendency for people to view addicts in a very negative light,” said Jeff Lymburner, the chief operating officer for Darrin’s Place in Española who is in the process of opening the as-yet-unnamed new treatment facility at the site of the former Days Inn. The facility won’t open for at least another 60 days.
“But more and more, we’re seeing government officials and the broader public incrementally becoming a little more willing to understand that these are problems that can affect every age of person, every economic class, gender,” Lymburner said. “The real way to look at it is that they’re people who need treatment and who need help. Rather than stigmatizing those people, there’s more support for caring for people. Especially since it does hit so many people close to home.”
Fuhlendorf noted that 12-step programs have a presence in nearly every pocket of New Mexico, including Taos.
“That’s also a good resource to get with people who are supportive and will help in anyway they can,” Fuhlendorf said.
Chapter 1 of the sixth edition of the Narcotics Anonymous book asks: “Who is an addict?”
“Most of us do not have to think twice about this question,” the big NA black book — as opposed to the big, blue-covered book Alcoholics Anonymous members are more familiar with — states. “We know. Our whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another; the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness, whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions and death.”