TREATMENT WAIT TOO LONG

UNTIL SHE PUSHES up her sleeve to show me the needle marks in the
crook of her arm, I have a hard time believing this woman is a heroin
addict.

The tracks are just plain incongruous with the sewing machine in the spare
room where she sews clothes for her child. They clash with her other roles
as stay-at-home mom and classroom volunteer.

She knows the two realities don't go together.

That's why she voluntarily entered a treatment program shortly after a
doctor got wise to her abuse of prescription opiates and she turned to
heroin last fall.

That's why her name is on the waiting list for methadone treatment - a wait
that could last four to six months, even though she has the resources to pay
for the treatment.

At her request, I'm not publishing her name or recognizable details of her
life. She's terrified she could lose her child, that identifying the junkie
will ruin the life of the mother. Which, to outside appearances, seems
remarkably normal.

A neatly tended home. Healthy-looking skin and hair. Marriage to a man who
earns good money at a local company despite a heroin habit of his own.

So far, she's managed to fly beneath the radar of bad consequences. She has
no criminal record. No abscesses or diseases or dangerous reactions to bad
stuff.

So far.

But she knows she's living dangerously. She's petrified of what might happen
between now and whenever she can start methadone treatment. Namely, that
she'll lose her daughter, now in elementary school and old enough to "know
something's up."

"I'm a really good parent," she insists. "I've never left my child alone or
with anyone I couldn't trust."

She begins to cry.

"But other people with just as much to lose have lost it. And in four to six
months, a person can go from being functional to being a prostitute or
whacking people on the head to take their purse to get money for drugs."

She's determined not to let that happen. She's determined to limit her use.
Since completing a two-week treatment program, she says she's stuck by her
resolve not to get loaded. She says she uses just enough to stay well, to
keep debilitating withdrawal symptoms at bay.

SHE WROTE ME in response to an unprecedented event last month: All of
Eugene's major TV network affiliates joined forces to air a special report
and town hall meeting on drug use in our community.

"I have a disease," her letter begins. "A chronic, progressive, fatal
disease. It's chemical addiction, specifically heroin addiction. Treatment
is available and I paid to spend time in an in-patient facility. It was not
intensive enough for me and so I continue my addiction, searching daily for
a way out.

"Methadone is a way out. However, the only way you can get methadone is from
one of two facilities in Lane County. Both have at least a four-month
waiting list. Considering that heroin addiction has reached epidemic
proportions and that deaths from heroin overdoses have skyrocketed, it seems
crazy to me that people who are ready to quit must wait at least four
months."

It seems crazy, as well, to Brinda Narayan-Wold, coordinator of Lane
County's Heroin Task Force. Just last week, the task force made the waiting
lists a top priority.

"There really ought not to be a wait for people who find the wherewithal to
say, `I'm ready to quit!' " she said.

A solution is not clear. Despite years of waiting lists, Lane County's
budget woes have left its methadone program struggling to maintain existing
staff, let alone expand, Director Linda Eaton said.

Private CODA Addiction Treatment Services hopes to double its 200-patient
capacity, Dr. Douglas Bovee said. But any such expansion is probably two
years away and depends on finding and keeping qualified staff - always a
challenge.

One solution, all agree, is getting the federal government to loosen its
regulation of methadone, now available only at registered, licensed and
inspected clinics.

"Methadone is the most regulated medicine in America," Narayan-Wold
lamented.

Bovee believes that's changing, that the day will come when private
physicians can oversee methadone treatment for stable patients.

For the woman who called me - and hundreds of other addicts - the issue is
when.

"Imagine you are diagnosed with a chronic, fatal disease. There's no cure,
but remission can be achieved. The drug that will start you on the path to
recovery is plentiful - but you must wait at least four months due to the
laws concerning how it's administered and a lack of funding to administer
the medication. No one can tell you how far the disease will progress - or
even if you will be alive - in four months."