{"id":22201,"date":"2018-08-26T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T17:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hustlehope.com\/?p=22201"},"modified":"2018-08-27T12:50:20","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T17:50:20","slug":"way-of-life-president-barb-williamson-talks-recovery-houses-with-whyy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hustlehope.com\/news\/way-of-life-president-barb-williamson-talks-recovery-houses-with-whyy\/","title":{"rendered":"Way of Life President Barb Williamson Talks MAT with WHYY"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Nina Feldman<\/a>\u00a0on August 20, 2018<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Cristina Rivell has been struggling with an opioid addiction since she was a teenager \u2014 going in and out of rehab for five years. \u00a0The most recent time, her doctor prescribed Suboxone, a low-dose opioid that curbs cravings and prevents symptoms of withdrawal.<\/p>\n

Rivell, 22, said it helped stabilize her \u2014 made her feel like she could get her life together, go back to school, look for a job without the distraction of constantly seeking a fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople think, like, you feel something or you\u2019re high, but when I take it, I just feel normal. I don\u2019t have my cravings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

During previous relapses, Rivell thought it was because she was trying to stay sober without any support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re by yourself, you kind of feel lonely,\u201d she said. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s easy to get in your head, and it\u2019s easy to say to yourself, \u2018Well, one day, I\u2019m just not gonna take it, and I\u2019m gonna get high for one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

She figured if she combined her daily dose of Suboxone with a supportive living environment, she\u2019d have a better chance. She wanted to move into a recovery house, where groups of people who are battling addiction eat together, go to meetings together, and support each other as they go to therapy.<\/p>\n

With her time in rehab running out, Rivell started calling around to see who had room for her. But that proved a challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say, like, \u2018I\u2019m Cristina, I\u2019m on Suboxone, I\u2019m just looking for an open bed,\u2019 and they\u2019re like, \u2018We don\u2019t take people on Suboxone,\u2019 and they\u2019d just hang up on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Part of the problem\u2019<\/h2>\n

Rivell\u2019s experience illustrates a debate that has garnered more attention as the devastating effects of the opioid crisis continue.<\/p>\n

Although a growing body of research<\/a> supports the efficacy and safety of medication-assisted treatments such as Suboxone, methadone and naltrexone for drug recovery, the usage is frowned upon by most recovery house owners, who demand \u2018cold turkey\u2019 sobriety.<\/p>\n

But as many specialists and government agencies<\/a> now consider the treatments to be the standard of care for opioid addiction, some are concerned that recovery houses with these rigid rules are pushing more users into homelessness.<\/p>\n

After Rivell called around for a few days, she began to worry that would be her fate. Her mother told her she couldn\u2019t come home. Rivell said her therapist suggested she try going off Suboxone to have an easier time finding housing.<\/p>\n

But she feared she would relapse again, and she didn\u2019t want to go through forced withdrawal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was scared because I thought I was going to go back through the cravings and be sick again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A few days later, though, she found an unlikely ally.<\/p>\n

Barbara Williamson, 30, opened her first recovery house in Southeastern Pennsylvania in 2014 when she was 25, having been sober just a year herself. When she started, she did not allow people using Suboxone or methadone to live in her houses. To her, it seemed like a crutch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried heroin when I was 15 years old. I quickly was doing it every single day. I ended up homeless in the streets,\u201d said Williamson, who credits the recovery house she lived in with saving her life. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cI was 98 pounds and willing to do anything for the next fix. I just thought if someone like me could get sober, why couldn\u2019t someone like you \u2013 without medication.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there were logistics to consider. Methadone is administered daily at a clinic, meaning that recovery house operators need to arrange for daily transportation for residents to get their dose. Suboxone comes in pill form, and patients usually take it daily on their own. Although it is a very low-dose opioid, it does have the potential for misuse.<\/p>\n

Williamson was wary.<\/p>\n

But then, one day last November, Williamson was struck by something she saw online.<\/p>\n

It was a Facebook post from a community activist named Brooke Feldman, who she knew only from her social media circles. The post called out recovery house operators for refusing to accept people on medication-assisted treatments, arguing they had \u00a0misconceptions about what\u2019s known as MAT.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you refuse to house residents who utilize maintenance medications or do not provide this option in your treatment programs because of personal opinion or you believe this will \u2018jeopardize the recovery of people not using medication,\u2019 your misinformed blindness is part of the problem,\u201d Feldman\u2019s post read.<\/p>\n

Williamson took the post personally. She felt that by opening recovery houses, she was a part of the solution, not the problem. So she set out to do some research \u2014 and prove Feldman wrong.<\/p>\n

She took some trainings and talked to a lot of doctors. And the more she learned, the more she began to realize that the evidence pointed in the other direction.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Williamson said, it was the number of overdose deaths among young people that pushed her to try something new.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do I have to do to not have morgues calling parents of 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids?\u201d said Williamson, who has had a number of her residents overdose after they left her housing. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s anything \u2014 I will do anything. So if the doctors and the facts are saying that MAT helps, then I will do my part to facilitate that need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\nContinued at WHYY.org<\/i><\/a>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Williamson opened her first house for residents on MAT five months ago in Delaware County. She\u2019s since opened three more in the area \u2014 three for men and one for women in total.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWay of Life President Barb Williamson Talks MAT with WHYY - Way of Life | Sober Living Homes Pennsylvania<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Way of Life's new houses facilitate a need for an increased number of sober living environments dedicated to clients utilizing medication-assisted treatment\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hustlehope.com\/news\/way-of-life-president-barb-williamson-talks-recovery-houses-with-whyy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Way of Life President Barb Williamson Talks MAT with WHYY - 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