Events address drug addiction in local communities

Looking back, Kelly Lawrence thinks her son’s dependence on alcohol and drugs began when he was 14. But it’s hard to say — he hid his disease for so long. The first time he asked for help, he was in his 20s. She knew he was using heroin.

They started making calls to see how to get into treatment, but stagnated once their answer came attached to a three-week waiting list.

“When a heroin addict says they want help, they need it now,” Lawrence said. “They’re not going to go, ‘OK, I’ll be back in three weeks.’ No, they’re going to go feed their habit. You’ve got that split second in time to possibly help them.”

The day her son said he had an addiction was roughly six years ago. As she lit a cigarette outside the Hilton Garden Inn in Kalispell, she counted down the days she had before she could pick her son up from jail.

Inside the inn, roughly 50 people gathered to talk about why the state’s number of people dependent on drugs continued to climb and what local communities needed to do to stop the trend.

THE MONTANA Healthcare Foundation hosted the Kalispell event in partnership with the attorney general’s office and the state departments of justice, corrections and health. It was the second of six talk sessions scheduled in Montana over the summer.

The audience included people with jobs as judges, public defenders, parole officers, medical professionals and state representatives. It also included families fighting addiction at home.

“I’m a grandma with a grandson in crisis,” said one woman as she introduced herself to the room.

Katie Loveland with the Montana Healthcare Foundation said an estimated 64,000 adults in the state have a substance-use disorder.

“In 2015, 138 people died just from drug overdoses in the state of Montana,” Loveland said. “Think of each of these people as a son, a daughter; many of these people are moms and dads.”

More than 90 percent of Montanans with alcohol or drug problems do not receive treatment, according to a joint report by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services and Montana Healthcare Foundation.

Out of the 32 state-approved facilities that provide treatment, more than 50 percent don’t report services for people with co-occurring addictions or mental illness, according to the report.

Lisa Smith with the Flathead Valley Drug Task Force said the state’s drug epidemic has created something similar to a caste system.

“Because once people have a drug problem and they have a felony, they can’t access housing. They can’t get a job, they have totally estranged their family,” Smith said.

Posters along the event room’s walls held words like “economic factors.” Audience members added sticky notes to the posters’ blank spaces with a list of issues or triggers in each category. Notes ranged from a lack of drug treatment options and funding to the need for a problem-solving court in the valley.

Looking at a category revolving around communication between systems, Kim Lahiff with the Department of Corrections laughed.

“Lack of communication is at the top,” she said. “There’s a lack of knowing what each other does, then there’s duplicating services.”

Lahiff said people in high-stress jobs like social services or the criminal justice system often “get into the grind” while trying to keep up with their work — harming their ability to work together.

She said the Department of Corrections has typically been the default place for people to get treatment, which isn’t “exactly the most effective treatment.”

“This is not a legal problem, this isn’t a corrections problem, this is a human problem,” she said. “This is exciting for us to be able to partner with everyone that we have needed for a long time.”

LAWRENCE SAID she hopes to see a growth in treatment options and better communication between the agencies she’s often felt lost within.

“Being involved in this as a mom of a heroin addict, it helps me see it from their side, to see their challenges,” she said about the Kalispell gathering. “They’re fighting the system so much too, they don’t want this problem either.”

Lawrence said in recent years, two of her son’s childhood friends died from drug overdoses. They grew up running through her kitchen and having sleepovers in her living room. Lawrence said at that time, she had been one of those moms who thought her son would never battle addiction or be a repeat name in the criminal justice system.

“The community, until it touches them, they are very judgmental. They’re pissed off because yeah these ‘druggies’ break into cars to feed their habit and it is horrible,” she said. “But until it touches them, they don’t get it. And in time, if this keeps up, it will touch them.”

The next listening session is scheduled for July 20 in Billings. The series will lead to a substance abuse and addiction summit later this fall. For more information, visit https://dojmt.gov/aid-montana.

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.