WOMEN NEED OWN PROGRAM TO HEAL FROM DRUG ADDICTIONS

Linda Damewood has been smoking crack for 16 years and trying to stop
for the last eight. She's been in and out of treatment so many times
she could fool professionals into letting her back onto the streets
so she could score again.

She's had relapses. But she's clean today, she says with pride. And
she agrees with Penny Craver, New Hanover County's Drug Treatment
Court coordinator, that North Carolina needs a 90-day inpatient
treatment program for women. Twenty-one days just isn't enough.

Damewood has sparkling brown eyes and a ready laugh, but she has seen
some dark moments in her 48 years. Like the time she left her
10-year-old daughter to go smoke crack and wasn't home by the time
the girl awoke. Eventually, the child went to live with her dance instructor.

Or when she lost her job at a drug and alcohol abuse prevention
center in Maryland because the county commissioners learned she was
smoking crack. She accidentally overdosed on her mother's Thorazine
when she was 14. Then it was marijuana, beer, cocaine, crack.

And treatment. Five days in a Maryland inpatient facility. An
extended stay at Davidson Alcoholic Care of Lexington, then at
Bethany House in Southern Pines.

Time in a state mental hospital, a recovery house in Chapel Hill, the
psychiatric ward of a Pinehurst hospital and in a halfway house in Wilmington.

After an arrest for having drug paraphernalia, she was accepted in
Drug Court. She's married now, painting houses and doing decorative
work on the side. She's staying clean, day by day.

There are outpatient programs such as those offered by Coastal
Horizons Center. And Walter B. Jones Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment
Center in Greenville offers 21- or 28-day women's inpatient treatment.

Doug Marlowe, senior scientist at the University of Pennsylvania's
Treatment Research Institute, says outpatient therapy is suitable for
most patients after a 21-day or 28-day stabilization period.

But he said there are some people who need residential, or inpatient,
treatment. Whether it's inpatient or outpatient, he said 90 days is
about the minimum treatment length that shows a response. Shorter
treatment courses are like taking 1 or 2 milligrams of aspirin - it's
not enough to be effective.

Outside of prisons, the state only operates one facility offering
90-day inpatient treatment, and that's DART-Cherry in Goldsboro. DART
stands for drug and alcohol recovery treatment. The Corrections
Department operates the center in a former Cherry Hospital building.

It offers both 28-day and 90-day regimens. Jim Jackson, manager of
the 300-bed facility, said the shorter program is educational, with
lots of videos and classes.

The 90-day program concentrates on getting clients to rethink their
approach to life, to stop blaming others and start taking
responsibility for their decisions and actions. Residents can study
for the GED. In a class of 20 to 40 residents, six to 10 typically
pass their high-school equivalency exams.

But that's for men only. There's no comparable 90-day program for
women. There should be.

Given Damewood's history, I figure she knows a thing or two about
treatment. She says it's harder for a woman to shake off concerns
about home and family than it is for a man. It may take a week or
more before a resident begins to think straight. In a three-week
course, she said, worries about returning home dominate the last week.

"A man has a strong self-identity," she said. "Women so often are a
reflection of everything else in their lives. She needs to focus on
herself to get an idea of who she is, so the recovery can be for her."

Jackson said the Corrections Department is considering establishing a
90-day program for women.

I would urge them to act on it. It's cheaper than sending these women
to prison for the treatment they need.