Day 4: Help is Available

Methadone clinic treats addiction with chance for normalcy

By Frank Otto
fotto@pottsmerc.com

(Photo by Kevin Hoffman/The Mercury)
Dr. Greg Pierce walks down the hall at
Habit OPCO in Pottstown.

Stepping into the conference room of Habit OPCO not long after he became director of the Pottstown methadone clinic, Douglas Albertson found a man writhing in withdrawal agony underneath the table.
Albertson was horrified. The clinic’s veteran staff shrugged it off.
“That’s opioid dependency,” Albertson said, now having served more than a year at the accredited institution.
Withdrawal from opioid drugs such as heroin puts addicts into terrible sweats, and induces nausea, diarrhea and intense abdominal pain, among other symptoms. The intensity of the withdrawal keeps many heroin addicts from kicking their dangerous habit.
That’s where methadone clinics like Habit OPCO come in.
“There’s fear of physical discomfort, fear of withdrawal,” Albertson said. “So, by getting this medication, you now have patients start to feel an affirmation and calm.”
“The first feel or inkling of withdrawal and they go into a panic situation,” said Dr. Greg Pierce, a doctor at the clinic. “Our goal is to help you get through the day and not need an illicit chemical in order to do it.”
At Habit OPCO, patients looking to recover from heroin or other opiate addictions take a daily oral dose of liquid methadone to block the effects of withdrawal.
In withdrawal, “the body is essentially saying that it expects to have an opioid in the system in order to feel and function normally,” Pierce said.

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Recovery houses offer addicts a chance, but heroin fights back

(Photo by Kevin Hoffman/The Mercury)
Kathie Mackie looks at her reflection
 in the memorial to her son Trevor.

By Brandie Kessler
York Daily Record/Sunday News

YORK -- She was just a kid and didn’t realize the risk.
He was adamant it wouldn’t kill him.
They never met, but Jamie Fogle and Trevor Mackie both ended up in a recovery house, trying to transition back to a functioning life while fighting heroin addictions that became too much to handle without help.
They took the steps to get sober, but staying sober isn’t easy. Even in a recovery house, some people can’t resist addiction.
Fogle, 21, of York, is still fighting it, living in a women’s recovery house in York.
Mackie couldn’t resist.
He went to the recovery house around Thanksgiving 2011 after he went through rehab.
He became the house president and got a good job — a requirement to live in the house. He was sober through Christmas.
In January, on his way to his parents’ Lower Pottsgrove home to pick up a car they got him so he could get to his job, he stopped in Reading and bought heroin.
When Mackie picked up the car, his mother didn’t know he had drugs on him. She told him to call when he got back to York, but he never did.
At the recovery house, he took the drugs and overdosed.
He was found dead Jan. 19, 2012, in the place where his family said he had started to come alive.

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Gateway to heroin often legally prescribed drugs

By Frank Otto
fotto@pottsmerc.com

(Photo by MetroCreativeConnection)
Prescription pills, both legitimately and illegally obtained,
are a gateway drug to heroin abuse.

By many accounts, the gateway to heroin addiction is not through other illicit drugs like cocaine or marijuana, but through prescription opiates like Oxycontin or Percocet. As such, one of the biggest ways to combat heroin addiction is to monitor or curtail the prescription of such powerful painkillers.
“The problem here in Pennsylvania is that there is nothing a physician can tap into to see if (addicts are) shopping. Legally, we do not have access to that information,” said Dr. Greg Pierce, a doctor at the methadone clinic, Habit OPCO in Pottstown. “That would be huge to helping this war against opiate use.”
Douglas Albertson, the clinic’s director, said a system like the one Pierce references exists in Ohio and other states in the Midwest.
Habit OPCO has all of its patients dual-enroll with other methadone clinics so that they can track whether their patients have been seeking treatment elsewhere and attempting to “double-dip.”
But Albertson and Pierce are unable to check up with physicians unless their patients give permission.
“I don’t know where you’ve been,” Pierce said. “You could have seen 10 physicians that have prescribed opiates.”
“We’d have to get a release from every physician within a 50-mile radius of this building,” Albertson said. “That’s how determined addicts can be.” The director of Temple University School of Medicine’s Center for Substance Abuse Research said addiction to prescribed pain medication has grown markedly in recent years.
“Prescription opiate abuse has skyrocketed mainly due to availability,” Dr. Ellen Unterwald said.

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Additional stories:
The cost of staying high vs. getting clean