SHORTAGE OF BEDS MAKES DETOX DIFFICULT

Four years after state officials slashed funding for detox beds, heroin
addicts desperate to get clean are being turned away by the dozens daily at
Boston's detox centers, health advocates say.

"When you reach out for help and it's just not there, it's like signing a
death sentence," said Tom Griffin, 37, a Charlestown native who spent a
week calling detox centers for a bed in June. "The more they cut beds,
they are killing people on the streets." Every day, CAB Health and
Recovery Services in Boston processes 35 or so requests for a detox bed
from patients without insurance, said CEO and president Kevin Norton. Of
those requests, four to five patients can be admitted. Beginning in 2001,
a combination of cuts to MassHealth basic insurance and state funding for
detox beds reduced the slots available in Boston from 310 to 190, said
John Auerbach, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission.
Statewide, beds dropped from 950 to 500 in the same period. The
cuts closed detox programs at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Boston and
CASPAR in Cambridge, Auerbach said. The Faxon House in Quincy, which also
offered detox, went out of business.

To make up for the shortfall, Mayor Thomas M. Menino authorized grants to
offer low-cost alternative detox methods, including acupuncture
detoxification. A separate $180,000 grant awarded in 2003 funded a
butrenorphine treatment program. Prescribed by a doctor, butrenorphine is
a maintenance drug that lessens an addict's heroin cravings.

Some beds are coming back on line. Since fiscal 2004, $21 million has been
set aside in supplemental money for substance treatment. That cash opened
87 beds and restored "transitional" beds for patients leaving detox, said
Michael Botticelli, assistant commissioner for substance abuse services
at the Department of Public Health.

"What we're really trying to do is not only think about detox bed
capacity, but also total system capacity," Botticelli said. DPH is also
bringing 20 detox beds and 35 transitional beds on line for women in the
criminal justice system. Despite the restorations, Auerbach said detox
centers have yet to reap benefits because "many of the programs laid off
staff and converted the facilities into other programs.

They were unsure this was going to be stable funding." Griffin, an addict
for 10 years, said he slept in the halls of Charlestown's Bunker
Hill housing project and continued to shoot up as he waited for a bed. A
social worker eventually secured MassHealth insurance for him and he
checked into CAB's facility in Danvers. Now, he says, he hasn't shot up in
100 days, works as a security guard and lives in a Somerville halfway
house. Not everyone who is turned away is lucky enough to make it into
treatment. "If we say, 'Maybe tomorrow,' we may lose them and then we see
them overdosing in places like the Public Garden," Norton said.