DETOX CENTER TO CLOSE

HICKORY - Catawba County will close its detoxification center for alcohol
and drug addicts because of state cutbacks.

The county's Mental Health Services Board decided to end the detoxification
program Aug. 9 after learning the county Mental Health department is
expected to have a $1.4 million budget deficit because of state cutbacks.

Fewer people have checked themselves into the southeast Hickory
detoxification center in the past year, and the service is costly, said
Mental Health Director John Hardy. The cut will save the department
$358,000 this fiscal year.

The center will accept its last patients today and will close on Aug. 9.
The Mental Health department will refer patients to Catawba Valley Medical
Center for emergency treatment or make them aware of a detoxification
center in Morganton.

Mental Health officials felt they had no choice but to close the eight-bed
center, Hardy said. "I think everyone regrets this decision very strongly,
but we have to maintain financial viability. In our world we're constantly
juggling one set of people's priorities over another's."

The closing further delays a long-held plan for a combined detoxification
and outpatient drug treatment center that the county had scheduled to start
building last fall. The department will now decide how to spend $1.5
million set aside for the project.

Mental Health had planned to consolidate its detoxification and outpatient
services, which are in separate locations. Patients are weaned from their
drug at the detoxification center before starting recovery through the
outpatient service.

The new center would have offered more room for education and help for
patients' families. The department now plans to move its outpatient service
to offices it has in the First Plaza building on Tate Boulevard.

The department took over the detoxification center in 1993 from the Flynn
Christian Fellowship Homes, which opened it in the 1980s. The center is
next to Flynn's halfway home for recovering male addicts.

Hardy said he thinks fewer patients have sought out the center recently
because a methadone recovery clinic opened in Hickory a year ago. Methadone
is a synthetic narcotic used in the treatment of addiction to heroin and
other drugs.

The dreary atmosphere at the aged detoxification center may also have
contributed to the decline, Hardy said.

The nine-bed Morganton detoxification center, which serves Alexander,
Burke, Caldwell and McDowell counties, will take Catawba County patients if
enough beds are open, said John Alexander, director of the Foothills Area
Mental Health service.