Gary Wilson was a young man in his twenties when he first experimented with heroin. His addiction started in the '80s with marijuana use, and escalated from there.
“I was smoking marijuana and then I graduated to messing with prostitutes and they introduced me to heroin,” Wilson said. “It was a lot of pressure at home so I was out in the street a lot and I started meeting different people. They didn’t have my best interest at hand, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
Wilson, 51, used heroin throughout his adult life, going in and out of treatment facilities before finally committing to recovery. For Wilson, drug addiction was “pure hell.”
“Heroin impacted my life by turning me into something I didn’t want to be—a thief, a crook, a liar… I hated myself,” he said. “I hated other people.”
Last year, friends told him about the Concerted Care Group, a new medical-assisted treatment facility located in the 400 block of E. 25th Street. He visited the clinic one day and signed up for treatment, undergoing a challenging recovery process that required daily doses of buprenorphine to gradually wean him off of his addiction.
Recovery didn’t come easy, but Wilson is a success story. He’s been clean for a year, owns a landscaping business now, and credits the combination of medicine, counseling services and ongoing support from the clinic for jump-starting his new life.
Stories like Gary Wilson’s are what push Maryland health officials to advocate for medical-assisted treatment facilities, federally funded clinics that treat addiction using medicine including methadone and buprenorphine. Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen says these clinics are a critical step in the treatment and recovery process.
Community in Crisis: Chasing the High, an in-depth look at the heroin problem in Maryland, airs Thursday at 7 p.m. on ABC2 News.
“They are the standard of care for treating drug addiction, for treating opioid addiction,” Dr. Wen said. “Medication-assisted treatment like methadone and buprenorphine have to be combined with psychosocial support and counseling services, but it is the combination that is effective. This is not my opinion, but the consensus of major medical organizations.”
According to Dr. Yngvild Olsen, medical director at the Institute for Behavior Resources (IBR) clinic in Baltimore, methadone and buprenorphine are opioid agonists, meaning they stabilize the part of the brain involved in opioid addiction, suppressing withdrawal symptoms and reducing cravings. Both need to be taken once a day.
The difference between the two, is that with methadone, a doctor can keep increasing a patient’s dosage with no ceiling as to what the effect may be. With buprenorphine on the other hand, there’s a ceiling. A doctor can keep increasing the dose, and the patient won’t see any more effect. It’s a difference that Dr. Olsen says could lead to overdose potential and possible side effects.
“That’s why for methadone for the treatment of opioid addiction, physicians can’t prescribe it out of their offices. Buprenorphine they can with a particular waiver,” she said. “Methadone, for the treatment of opioid addiction, can only be provided in very heavily regulated—both federally regulated and state regulated—specialized treatment programs.”
Such treatment programs like Concerted Care Group and IBR can be found clustered throughout the Baltimore area, but become a bit more scattered outside the city limits.
Anne Arundel County, for instance, houses five medication-assisted treatment programs, many of which are concentrated in the northern part of the county in Glen Burnie and Brooklyn Park.
Related: Heroin addict shares her story as Anne Arundel County works to find location for methadone clinic
“Anne Arundel County has challenges with transportation to medical care,” said Anne Arundel County Health Officer Dr. Jinlene Chan, but she says the county is looking to increase access for those in need, with the Department of Health looking to open a second clinic in Annapolis to better serve the southern portion of the county. Anne Arundel County, she says, currently has third highest number of heroin deaths in the state of Maryland, following Baltimore County and Baltimore City.
For some, a lack of treatment facilities could mean life or death, but for others, a little inconvenience is no match in the fight for recovery.
Tracy Sloan, 27, a barista who lives in Pasadena, drives to get her daily doses of methadone at the Adult Addictions clinic in Glen Burnie. Sloan said her addiction began with painkillers around the age of 24, and she’s been using methadone for treatment since January 2015. Her daily doses of medicine have now tapered off to once a week, and luckily, her clinic isn’t far from her home.
“I’m sure it’s a little more difficult when you don’t have a car,” she said. “When I was going every day, I’ll be honest, it didn’t bother me because when I was using, I would wake up sick every morning. I was constantly having to get up and go out and find ways to make money. It was always something illegal. To me, going to the methadone clinic to get my medicine is nothing compared to what I had to do before.”
In Baltimore City, Dr. Leana Wen says there are 20,000 people who use heroin out of a population of 620,000. In 2014, there were more people who died of overdose than died from homicide, a figure she says amounts to one person dying from a drug overdose every single day.
“Addiction is something that doesn’t just affect the individual,” she said. “It affects the entire family. It affects the entire society… it leads to reduced education, reduced opportunities, it adds to concentrated poverty, and it worsens our perceptions of justice and interactions with the police.”
The results of heroin addiction and treatment aren’t typically welcomed by community members. Neighbors often protest the creation of medical-assisted treatment facilities, fearing crime, loitering and the proximity to small children could negatively impact property values and also the quality of a neighborhood.
See also: Owner of methadone clinic pulls plans after receiving death threats
Banky Gbangbalasa, owner of the Ugele Insurance Agency located just four doors down from Concerted Care Group on East 25th Street, said he originally protested the clinic’s construction and took his grievances to the city, but was ultimately ignored.
“I don’t like it being in my neighborhood because of the people,” Gbangbalasa said. “Sometimes the people just look like they’re going to fall down. It’s not good for the neighborhood because of the kind of people that go there. They can’t stand erect. That’s what we deal with. I make sure that my door is locked, just to be safe.”
To those in opposition, Gary Wilson has a message.
“You’ll be better off getting these centers in your neighborhood, next door to you because you don’t have to worry about getting your house broken into. You got a lot of these addicts in these centers, so trust and believe, think it over, and maybe you can help somebody.”
Reporter Christian Schaffer will have more on methadone clinics in Maryland Thursday at 7 p.m. on ABC2.
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