There is weariness around David Attridge’s eyes as he describes the toll the opioid crisis is taking on the Rochester community.
"There are still people dying left and right. The number of people (who died) since June who are very close to us is downright scary, to be honest with you. We just see more and more, and they're getting younger and younger."
In the past two months, four people Attridge knows personally have succumbed to their addiction. The most recent, a volunteer who worked with Attridge’s support group Recovery Now NY, was buried on Friday. “He went out (to use drugs) one more time and he didn’t make it back,” Attridge said.
The next day, August 12, Attridge marked two years of sobriety. He has spent much of the past 24 months working to help others who are still in the grips of a torment that he understands.
Recovery Now NY has considered numerous ideas, including the establishment of a local high school for teens who battling addiction. A partnership with the town of Gates and its police department has led to what has been called the first suburban Monroe County drop-in centerfor people looking for help with their addiction.
Attridge says it's time for some outside the box thinking to reach heroin and opioid addicts where they are.
One idea his organization is working on is at at-home recovery program as an alternative to in-patient rehab. Joe Bahamonde, a Recovery Now NY volunteer, said many addicts don't seek help because they can't take time away from their jobs and families to enter a program.
"Not everyone can just disappear to go into detox or in-patient. If that's the path they need to go, that's fine, but so many people, due to financial and family constraints just can't do that, so let's meet them on their level."
A series of at home services, Attridge said, would give them some different options.
"Basically, it would almost be like a person having a sober companion, where we would be able to get them on Vivitrol, which is a drug replacement; we could detox them if they needed to be detoxed, and then we would get them into an intensive, five-day a week outpatient program that we would be able to set up to their schedule where they would be able to do it."
The proposed one-year program is still in the development stages. To proceed further Recovery Now NY is trying to confirm insurance coverage and get certification from the New York State Office of Substance and Alcohol Abuse.
"The biggest thing people say in recovery is you need to change people, places and things,” Bahamonde said. “So throughout the program we would be helping them change people by incorporating people who are in recovery into their lives; the places, by giving them new ideas of what to do and where to do them, and the things - we're not doing drugs anymore, so what are we gonna do?"
