TREATING ADDICTION IS COSTLY

Officials Say Methadone Program Long, Number of Patients on the Rise

LEWISBURG - West Virginia drug addicts pay more than $13 million a
year to private companies for methadone treatment, and at least some
are having a hard time finding the $4,500 a year it takes to be in
such a program.

That's a problem since methadone - an addictive drug that doesn't make
people high and is used to wean addicts off more harmful opiates like
heroin or OxyContin - is not a drug that recovering addicts can quit
without any negative effects.

"Methadone is not something you can stop taking overnight," said
Genise Lalos, director of addiction services for Prestera Center in
Huntington.

Places like Prestera, which don't provide methadone but monitor
patients as they go through detox for a variety of drugs, typically
keep patients for just three days.

Getting off methadone can take more than a month, and places like
Prestera can't hold the patients that long.

Patients who quit methadone treatments are then turned away from other
centers and may end up back on the streets or in behavioral hospitals.

"There's no place else to put these individuals," Lalos said. "We
recommend they go back (to the methadone programs) but they say it's
cost prohibitive."

The typical methadone treatment, which costs $12 to $12.50 a day at
the state's seven clinics, brings the private companies running the
state's clinics millions of dollars a year. For National Specialty
Clinics, which runs six of the seven clinics in West Virginia and
handles about 3,000 patients, the $12.50 a day covers all the
company's expenses and still leaves enough left over to turn a profit.

But Steve Gnass, the company's CEO, said the price for treatment is
"the best bargain that ever hit the state."

"They come from $300-a-day habits," Gnass said. "For $300 a day, they
do some really, really nasty things. That means virtually anything
from taking food off the table from children to stealing to
prostitution."

Gnass told lawmakers at an interim legislative meeting Monday in
Lewisburg that most methadone patients stay in the program for 12 to
18 months. At $12.50 a day, that's $6,750 to get through treatment,
plus a one-time $60 program entry fee.

"That's a lot of money," said Delegate Don Perdue, D-Wayne.

The profits for the private companies running the clinics are likely
to increase as the number of methadone patients and the number of
clinics grows.

Currently, West Virginia has clinics in Martinsburg, Parkersburg,
Clarksburg, Huntington, Charleston, Williamson and Beckley.

Gnass said Mercer County has a "major problem," and more people in the
Beckley clinic come from that county than the Beckley area.

"There are just swarms of opiate-addicted people there," he
said.

Gnass said rural areas in the southern part of the state often have
problems with OxyContin addiction, while the northern part of the
state has a problem with heroin addiction.

"Pittsburgh is feeding the northern part of the state with almost pure
heroin," Gnass said.

Since methadone treatments require coming in every day for a dose of
the drug, which is a liquid and looks like cough syrup, recovering
addicts have to drive to the nearest clinic every day. Gnass said some
patients have to get up at 3 a.m., drive for two hours to the nearest
clinic, take their dosage, drive back home another two hours and then
go to work.

Gnass is looking at opening more clinics, but some neighborhoods don't
like the idea.

"The perception, at least to some members of the community, is the
drug addict hanging out on the corner," said Sen. John Unger,
D-Berkeley. "People do have that perception."

Gnass said he was surprised himself about how many people in West
Virginia come in for methadone treatment. He said his clinics treat
people from 20 years of age to 72 years of age, and people with jobs
ranging from coal miners to attorneys to people without any job at
all.

Gnass said his company originally estimated treating only 1,800
patients by now.

"It's just been astounding," he said. "Astounding and scary."