U.S. Surgeon General visits RI addiction recovery center
Trump administration official makes Ocean State visit to discuss addiction treatment and prevention
PAWTUCKET – As U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome M. Adams listened intently as addiction specialists and people in recovery shared their stories of the battles with addiction, he knew what he was learning inside Pawtucket’s Anchor Recovery Community Center would be valuable nationwide.
“It’s pressing and personal … I want to be a mouthpiece for you, I want to lift your great work,” Adams said. “What’s working that we need for the rest of the country? What else do we need to scale up? What’s getting in your way? What should we be doing in Washington to help you dig out from under this epidemic?”
Adams, appointed to his post last year by President Donald Trump, visited Pawtucket as a guest of U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who invited the Surgeon General to the city to highlight
the state’s opioid treatment and prevention programs, as well as the federal Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act.
While Adams as the country’s top public health advocate has prioritized addressing the opioid epidemic, he’s not just focused on this because it’s his job. He’s lived the experience and knows the pain that addiction can cause for families around the country.
Adams’ brother is incarcerated in state prison in Maryland after years of self-medicating with substances led to him committing a series of criminal offenses.
That path, Adams said, is “all too familiar” given the nation’s growing opioid crisis.
“I’ve spent money, I’ve had money stolen, I’ve dealt with it as a family member. I’ve seen my mother cry, be hospitalized for stress,” Adams said, adding that his own mother feared leaving her home out of the worry that her son, Adams’ brother, would steal a television to try to sell for narcotics.
Jonathan Goyer, who grew up in East Providence, recalled his life before recovery during Friday’s round table discussion at Anchor in Pawtucket. He was living in a box on the streets of Providence wondering where he’d find that next $20 to get his fix. His struggles with opiate addiction lasted for 10 years and came after he lost his father in 2004 and brother in 2009, both to overdoses.
Goyer recalled overdosing on opioids in 2013 and being hit with Narcan at the hospital. He said when he came to in a hospital bed, one of the first things to cross his mind was “where was this in 2009 and 2004?” Perhaps, he wondered, Narcan could have saved his father or brother.
Since then, Goyer has been a Narcan advocate and then went to work at Anchor through their MORE program – Mobile Outreach Recovery Efforts. Recovery coaches from Anchor are deployed to hospitals, cor- rectional facilities, bus stops, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters to aid in the battle against addiction.
Since its inception, MORE has reached more than 600 people in the streets and referred 800-plus to outpatient services. Their team, he explained, accounted for 42 percent of the distribution of Narcan around the state of Rhode Island in 2017.
“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connectiveness,” Goyer said.
Adams said one of his focuses is removing the stigma from Naloxone – a medicine that can treat, block, and reverse the effects of a narcotic overdose in an emergency – and ensure that the life-saving medication is not just for first responders but for everybody.
“Each and every one of you can save a life … People overdose in fast food restaurants, libraries, gas stations, we need everyone to be willing to carry Naloxone,” Adams said. “It’s really easy and I can teach you in 30 seconds.”
Another stigma that Adams hopes to address as Surgeon General is the notion that opioid overdoses are isolated incidents. He acknowledged a recent poll which said that half of the people polled think opioids are a problem but not an emer- gency in their area. After saying that, he asked those in attendance to raise their hand if they knew someone who overdosed – and nearly the entire room responded by hoisting their arms into the air.
“This is in your community … It takes an all-hands-on-deck response,” he said. “It’s all our fault, we need to be focused on what we can do to turn things around. A community problem is all of our problem. The only way to combat it is to fight together.”
Whitehouse said that he hoped those in attendance would take from the session that recovery “deserves this kind of attention.”
“It’s a really important issue to have the Surgeon General … He’s the best mouthpiece and amplifier for health policy in the federal government.”
U.S. Congressman James Langevin said it was an honor to host Adams, saying he was looking forward to working with him on a federal level to address the challenge and epidemic that is seen not only in Rhode Island, but across New England and the nation.
“We have to shift the focus from a law enforcement issue to one of treatment and recovery,” Langevin said.
Deborah O’Brien, President and Chief Operating Officer of The Providence Center, said she was excited to be hosting the Surgeon General and members of Rhode Island’s federal delegation at Anchor because it was an opportunity for them to learn about the “innovative programs and partnerships” that combat Rhode Island’s statewide opioid crisis.
While Rhode Island in 2010 was the state with the highest substance use, O’Brien said, there were gaps in treatment and recovery and little in the community to help. But under Holly Fitting, The Providence Center’s Vice President of Recovery and Residential Services, and the late Jim Gillen, Anchor came along at a much-needed time to fill a void. Now, O’Brien describes Anchor as a “national leader in peer recovery.”
Deb Dettor, Director of Anchor Recovery, has been in recovery herself since 1985. She said that there are “amazing opportunities” at Anchor, but the most needed piece is to remove the shame and stigma from recovery.
“It blows me away, one of the things we do (at Anchor) is bust stigma,” she said. “We are recovery, we are people in recovery, that’s one way to lower stigma and shame. You have to talk the language of recovery.”