Recovery efforts could benefit
FINDLAY, Ohio — Communities ravaged by America’s opioid epidemic are starting to get their share of a $50 billion pie from legal settlements.
Most of that money comes with a requirement that it be used to address the overdose crisis and prevent more deaths.
It could mean places come to look more like the area around Findlay. Here, conservative Hancock County has built a comprehensive system focused on both treatment and recovery.
“People recover in a community,” said Precia Stuby, the official who heads the county’s addiction and mental health efforts. “We have to build recovery-oriented communities that support individuals.”
It was 2007 when Stuby began hearing from officials about prescription opioids being misused.
That was about the same time Jesse Johnson, then 14, was prescribed the painkiller Percocet.
The Findlay native needed stents put into her kidneys as treatment for infections and kidney stones. When the prescriptions stopped, she became sick from withdrawal.
“I remember not even being able to hold my daughter,” said Johnson, now 31. “It just hurt.”
Cocaine and opioids from the black market helped Johnson ease the pain.
By then, county officials were seeing the area’s fatal opioid overdose toll tick up. The recovery system then included only outpatient services and Alcoholics Anonymous.
From 1999 through 2020,
131 deaths in the county were attributed to opioids.
Officials created a plan with the help of the federally funded Addiction Technology Transfer Center that stressed recovery and built upon a local recognition that “this is our family, our friends, our brothers, our sisters,” Stuby said.
The county’s approach, which echoes experts’ recommendations for use of the settlement money, is people with the right support can recover from addiction.
There’s evidence the efforts are helping. After 28 overdose deaths from all drugs last year, Hancock County has three confirmed overdose deaths and five suspected ones so far in 2023.
Johnson is still in recovery, has two of her children living with her and regularly sees two others who live with her stepfather.
Earlier this year, she started a peer support job with the Family Resource Center.
“It’s something that I’ve always wanted to do,” she said, “because I wanted to be that person that reached out to me and then found me at one of the worst times in my life and pulled me together somehow.”