Surviving OxyContin: Methadone program gives life back to addicts, community

This article comes from the New Brunswick Beacon and the link is http://www.newbrunswickbeacon.ca/2010/03/surviving-oxycontin-methadone-program-gives-life-back-to-addicts-community/4972


Surviving OxyContin: Methadone program gives life back to addicts, community

Chris Andrews slouches on a chair with his eyes rolling back in his head. He’s limp and has never felt so relaxed. Three-hundred milligrams of OxyContin would do that to the best of us. A cigarette dangles from his lips. The ashes gather on his t-shirt. It hurts to keep his eyes open but he struggles anyway. What a waste of 200 bucks it would be just to fall asleep. He’d rather sit there with his head bobbing. Asleep. Awake. Asleep. He calls them the nods and he chased them every day for the first five years of his 20s. Oh what a feeling.

His mother can’t remember the last time she had a good night’s sleep. She’s been spending every night sitting in a chair in his room, watching him sleep. She wants to be there in case he takes his last breath. Watching him sleep, she probably thinks of his high-school graduation, their family vacation to Florida, his passion for music, and the endless phone calls from girls in love with this once attractive and charming little boy. She never thought this awesome kid could ever be snatched away and replaced with a thieving addict.

That was life for five years in Andrews’ home.

Lindsey White wakes up with a bad hangover but she hasn’t had a drink in months. The headache, the nausea, the cramps, and the irritability have taken over her body. She’s sick and tired of it but what can she do? It’s her life.

Minutes later she’s screaming and slamming doors. She picks up a cup of hot coffee and throws it at her sister’s boyfriend.

At 20, she’s a tiny thing, maybe 100 pounds, but she’s strong enough to fling the Christmas tree across the room in a fit of rage.

Thirty minutes later, she’s calm. Twenty milligrams of OxyContin will do that to a person.

That was her life for four years.

Hundreds of households in Cape Breton looked much like these after an OxyContin plague came to town in the early 2000s. It swept through like a raging hurricane and turned the entire place upside down. No one saw it coming but all would see its effects.

Cleaning up Glace Bay in the middle of the OxyContin storm has been a long painful struggle. But in 2004, when a methadone maintenance program came along, the eye of the storm would pass. Addicts would become recovering addicts and the town would start to stand on its feet again.

***
Cape Breton has been heralded as one of the world’s most picturesque islands. Its rocky shores, valleys, rolling farmland, and scenic Cabot Trail would put any postcard to shame.

But tucked away in the east is Industrial Cape Breton, a group of weathered communities that managed to cling to the coal mines and steel mills until the late ‘90s. When the communities finally lost their grip on the industries, they lost their grip on any sense of normalcy the place ever felt. High unemployment rates, a stressed out economy, and higher than average physical and mental illnesses made Industrial Cape Breton the perfect breeding ground for drug addiction.

So when OxyContin came to town, what was not to love? It took away the pain of living in that God-forsaken place. And, it was cheap – cheap enough to be dubbed Hillbilly Heroin. For many, it was nothing short of idyllic.

OxyContin is an opiate used to treat pain. Its name comes from the terms oxycodone and continuous, meaning that for four to six hours it provides a continuous dose of oxycodone. It’s normally prescribed to cancer and chronic pain patients, but after its debut in the late ‘90s, it became a popular street drug because of its affordability and the heroin-like high it produces. Users chew, snort, and inject the pill to get an instant and intense high.

***
Glace Bay was going about its business when the Oxy hurricane hit. The town was just getting used to living without the mines. It was just getting used to living without money. It was just getting used to being on its hands and knees begging for a sense of pride and self-worth it once enjoyed. It was just getting used to asking itself, “Why me?”

OxyContin prayed on the town’s vulnerability. When it arrived, it would take anyone in its path. Didn’t matter how much or how little they made or what goals they had or what paths they were on. It wanted everybody. People in their late teens and 20s were hardest hit by the drug, but it did manage to get a few folks in their 30s, 40s, and beyond.

White was in her second year of university when it caught her. She was home for Christmas break and partying. One pill led to another. Her month-long vacation was over and she was now an addict.

It would be the end of her life as a happy-go-lucky university student.

For four years, her life depended on OxyContin. Every morning she would wake up and immediately feel the flu-like withdrawals.

“I would start sneezing. That’s when I knew it was going to start coming. And then tense right up. And you’re frozen but you’re sweatin’. Your mind just gets all fuzzy. You just can’t really think straight. And then your mood. The emotional part. You can’t explain it. That’s probably the worst part of it,” White said.

Her morning temper tantrums would send everyone flying to their bedrooms, crying, “Lindsey, what’s going on with you?” But the only thing that could calm her rage was that magical pill.

“When you don’t have them and everybody’s trying to figure out what’s wrong…you don’t want to listen to anybody,” Andrews said.

“You’ll fight with anybody. You don’t care what you say to hurt them. You physically hurt them. You can tear them apart.”

Because White took just enough OxyContin to keep the withdrawals away, she hid her addiction until the very end.

But because Andrews chased the Oxy high to the very end, there was no hiding it from his family. Three months into his addiction, his mother started seeing signs. She suspected cocaine and took him for drug tests.

“At that time, OxyContin … wasn’t on the drug test strips. When I told her I wasn’t doing anything and she got me tested, it all came up negative,” Andrews said.
Even the military was blind to Oxy’s existence. Andrews joined the military in 2003, three years into his addiction. Their drug tests didn’t check for opiates, either. He fooled them for four years.

Eventually OxyContin would start to rule the town and every suspicious parent got a wake-up call.

But by the time parents clued in, it was too late. Their kids were addicts and would do anything to keep it that way. Their innocent children had become criminals on the verge of either overdosing or going to jail.

“Once I sold everything I had, then I started stealin’ from my parents. Money, cameras, DVD players; anything of value I started taking. I stole from every single family member I had. You’ll go anywhere, you’ll steal anything,” Andrews said.
He spent six weeks in jail for robbery after breaking a house-arrest sentence.

“People were shoplifting, (doing) break and enters, thefts, domestic abuses, crimes of opportunity and property-related crimes to support their drug habit,” said Cst. Steve Nagy with the Cape Breton Regional Police. “Most crime was related to drugs and addiction.”

A report released in 2006 by the Community Partnership on Prescription Drug Abuse, called Painting the Picture of Prescription Drug Abuse in Cape Breton, revealed that in 2001, the Cape Breton Regional Police reported 100 break and enters in Glace Bay. In 2004, that number jumped to about 175. The incidence of break and enters in the Sydney area during that same period more than doubled.

Over that same period, the number of domestic violence referrals in Cape Breton Regional Municipality jumped from 322 to 701.

Nobody was safe from thieving addicts.

A Glace Bay priest was reportedly held at knife-point and robbed several times. Old folks were at risk because they were likely to have medication in their homes. Even dead people’s homes were at risk. When White’s stepfather died, the funeral home warned her family not to publish his battle with cancer because addicts would target the home for pain medication. To an outsider, that may sound shocking, but to the locals, that was life now. They had no choice but to adapt to life with OxyContin.

Some families would accept the Oxy plague while others refused to live with it.
Andrews got kicked out of his parents’ house and had nowhere to go. He had lost his friends and stolen from all his family members. His car became home for two months.

***
It seems medically impossible that Andrews is alive to tell his story. He describes the amount of OxyContin in his system every day as “enough to drop a horse.”
But not all were that lucky.

“In 2003 and 2004 (there was) an 18-month span when there were about 22 deaths,” Nagy said. “I was in the drug section at the time and we ended up going on sometimes two (calls) a day.”

Among the dead were brothers Jimmy and Robert MacDonald from Glace Bay. They died on the same night.

***
When the OxyContin storm started killing people, change came to Cape Breton.
In 2004, the methadone maintenance program came to life. The idea came from the newly formed Community Partnership on Prescription Drug Abuse. The methadone maintenance program became part of Cape Breton District Health Authority’s Mental Health and Addiction Services.

“It happened very quickly here because we had such high profile attention around the deaths,” said Dr. Joseph Cox, staff physician with the methadone maintenance program.

“It was seen as a terrible thing that young people were dying here, so we kind of benefited from that attention because the government … found money to try and deal with this problem.”

Methadone is a synthetic opiate that stays in the body for up to 24 hours. Unlike other opiates, methadone doesn’t produce euphoria or sedation but it suppresses withdrawals. Each day, addicts take methadone until the dosage is lowered to the point they no longer need an opiate to cope.

“It’s used to replace the opiate that the person was taking. It’s very much like nicotine replacement and the patch. You’re giving back the drug so the patients don’t have the withdrawal from the substance,” Cox said.

“We stabilize people on a methadone dose so they don’t feel that sickness and they can get back to their lives that they feel they have lost.”

Two methadone clinics treating 300 opiate-dependant patients operate in Cape Breton Regional Municipality: one in Glace Bay serving Glace Bay and its neighbouring town New Waterford, and one in North Sydney which serves North Sydney and Sydney.

As part of the methadone maintenance program, patients receive counselling and have the option to participate in personal enrichment programs to deal with the stressors of getting clean.

“In getting stable on methadone, they suffer. They suffer the realities of life, which is, ‘Now I have to pay my taxes, now I have to pay my bills, now I have to get my kids back.’ And during all that they also have to pee in a bottle in front of somebody, they have to go to pharmacy every day, or at least twice a week. It’s very stigmatizing,” Cox said.

“And that’s where counselling can be very important.”

Patients typically need methadone for at least two years. Some stay on it longer, and some may need it for life.

Cox said about 10 per cent of patients have completed the program. Jillian MacIntyre is one of them.

She became addicted to OxyContin in 2000 when she was working at a call centre.
“I hit rock bottom twice. I sold everything I owned: computers, jewellery, and everything I could sell. Even I took stuff from (my father), like tools and stuff,” she said.

“I probably stole from everyone I knew. It’s not that I didn’t care; I just couldn’t deal with it. I just had to do whatever I could.”

In 2004, she started the methadone program. While she was on the program, she went back to school and got a job as a legal assistant.

A year ago she felt strong enough to finish the program.

“I found the first two weeks hard. I was thinking about it a lot, but then I’d get busy at work and just think of it less, and then it just went away,” she said.
“It’s wonderful now.”

***
Before the methadone maintenance program came to town, most addicts in Glace Bay had lost their jobs, quit school, lost their children, lost families and friends, lost all their belongings and sometimes a place to live.

Cox said the program has given them the opportunity to get all that back.

“I believe that about 80 per cent of the people in the program are doing well,” he said.

“You’re talking about taking one person … who sometimes can’t even find a place to sleep, and then going to a point in their life where they’ve actually gotten back trusting relationships with their families. We see people going back to get their GED.

We see people getting jobs. We see people making requests to get back their children.”

Soon after Andrews joined the program, his life started to change. His parents took him back, he dropped his drug associates, started seasonal work as a fisherman, and stopped stealing.

He said this wouldn’t be possible without the methadone maintenance program.
“If that wasn’t here, I know I would either be in jail, or I would be dead.”

White said she couldn’t have kicked OxyContin without the program.

“It just gave me time to get strong enough to not want to use drugs and then eventually get strong enough to not want to use the methadone too.”

As an addict, the mirror was her worst enemy. It showed her that this once blond-haired blue-eyed popular cheerleader was now what she describes as “gross.”

With help from the program, she slowly regained her self-esteem.

“It’s good again. You’re not afraid to go in a store with your head up. People aren’t talking about you. Even if they are, oh well.”

She and Andrews admit that it takes a while to regain everything.

“The sad thing about everything is (my relatives) trust me but it’s still in the back of their minds. It’s going to be; I put them through a lot,” Andrews said.

“I had so many friends and I don’t’ have a lot of them back. My best friend I had my whole life — the two of us were inseparable — we don’t even talk.”

White now has a two-year-old daughter, Alexis, and she hopes to start a nursing degree this fall. She said her addiction and recovery has brought out an instinct to nurture others.

Nagy, who also sits on the board of directors for the Community Partnership on Prescription Drug Abuse, said a reduction in drug dependency in Cape Breton has led to a reduction in drug-related offenses.

Cox said once patients become stable on methadone, they no longer need to engage in criminal activity to support their drug habits.

“(The methadone program) removes the … behaviours that go along with opiate dependency, including needing to use more opiates, being focussed on finding the opiates. By taking that away from them, they no longer have to be focussed on stealing to get money to buy drugs,” he said.

“A lot of credit has to be given to these patients in their efforts to be well.”

***
Glace Bay looks different than it did at the height of the OxyContin storm. Yes, the psychologist’s office is still packed each day with people waiting for their nerve-pill script. The dollar store and fried chicken restaurant are still among the few businesses doing well, and three days before the first of the month is still the happiest day on Earth for Cape Bretoners. It’s that magical day when social assistance, welfare, and old age pensions cheques appear in bank accounts or in mailboxes. But downtown Glace Bay has seen change. Once littered with groups of twenty-somethings on the hunt for buyers and sellers, the street exudes a renewed sense of tranquility.

“It’s a lot different,” White said.

“Before Oxys were around, there were people around town just hangin’ around, eatin’ pizza and stuff. Then when you’re usin’, people are still hangin’ around but it’s a totally different crowd and they don’t got pizza in their hands. They’re walkin’ with their hands in their pockets because they don’t want to drop their pill, and they got all their hoodies up and their hair’s all down and greasy. And now you go through and there’s nobody.”

At OxyContin’s peak, addicts could find a pill within minutes. A stroll through downtown’s Commercial Street is all it took. Andrews said it would take at least eight hours to find one now.

It’s the peace and quiet locals longed for since OxyContin took centre stage.
The OxyContin storm is passing. Crime has dwindled, families have reunited, and many of the once charming little boys and girls have found their way back to innocence and laughter.

As for Glace Bay, just when the town started to wonder how much more it could take, the eye of the Oxy hurricane passed. But one OxyContin sucker punch after another has left a lot of scars. Those scars will always be there, but they’re simply a reminder that despite all its weaknesses and misfortunes, this old coal-mining town can stand up to the nastiest storm to ever hit. Oh what a feeling.