Fighting Opioid Addiction in Somerville

Somerville is taking action to help opioid addicts and their families. The Board of Aldermen passed a resolution on May 14, encouraging the police department not to arrest addicts, but to assist them in getting treatment. The city has also hired a substance abuse counselor to work with the department.

“There is a disconnection between the resources and people who are addicted. We need someone to connect them,” Ward 1 Alderman Matt McLaughlin told Somerville Neighborhood News (SNN).

As a Somerville native, McLaughlin witnessed many overdose deaths while growing up. “A lot of kids lost hope and the dreams that they had when they were young. When it came time to face reality, people weren’t ready for that, they thought it would be a lot easier to stay in the drug world than go to college,” McLaughlin said.

What upsets McLaughlin even more is the lack of funding for inpatient rehab programs in the city, especially the closure of Somerville detox unit at Somerville Hospital in 2009.

“The clear thing is that we need more resources, more money to be allocated to get people to treatment,” McLaughlin said.

Patty Contente, the manager of Somerville’s Trauma Response Network, is also concerned about the lack of rehab beds. “One of the things we are doing in Somerville is to work in partnership with community groups,” Contente told SNN. “We are considering recovering coaching, how can we bring those resources as a way to provide alternative community support while folks are waiting for the treatment beds, and longer term treatment, and then the needs of people when they come out of treatment.”

The substance abuse counselor recently hired will work at the police station and provide residents with information about available resources. According to Contente, the counselor will also visit the addicts’ families to learn more about their needs. “The goal will be to ensure that family members have information on resources to support themselves and gain knowledge about how to support their loved one in recovery,” Contente added.

The Board of Aldermen is also pushing for more meaningful connections between addicts and recovery resources. On May 14, McLaughlin submitted a resolution that asks the Somerville police department to learn from the city of Gloucester, where addicts who come to the police station and ask for help with a substance abuse problem, are helped, not arrested.

“They said that any addict who comes to the police would receive, quote ‘an angel to walk them down the road to a detox for recovery,’” McLaughlin read the statement from the Gloucester police department to the rest of the board. Other aldermen spoke up in support of the idea.

“They can’t find a job, they are back to the terrible cycle. If we can stop that before it starts by treating people instead of putting people away in prison where they don’t belong and they only get worse and we only make criminals out of people, that is the productive route,” said Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz at the meeting.

According to McLaughlin the city is taking positive steps to combat the epidemic, but there is lot more to do. “It’s a big cycle, there is prevention, stopping people before they start, helping people when they need help, and helping people after the effects,” McLaughlin told SNN. “We really need a beginning, middle and end treatment.”

You can watch SNN’s three part series on Opioid Addiction and Treatment at http://www.scatvsomerville.org.