Indiana's Commission to Combat Drug Abuse says there's been a steep rise in substance abuse disorder across the state.
“In the last year, we’ve seen a 60 percent increase in naloxone from EMS and a 50 percent increase in overdoses in our emergency departments,” said Douglas Huntsinger, executive director for drug prevention, treatment and enforcement and chairman of the Indiana Commission to Combat Drug Abuse.
Treatment facilities across the state have also seen an increase in demand.
“We saw an alarming number of women who had been in recovery relapsing,” during the pandemic said Wendy Noe, executive director of the Dove Recovery House for Women.
The Dove Recovery House is a free residential treatment program. Normally they have about 20 to 30 women on their wait list.
“We expanded to a new location about four years ago and we house 40 women a night,” said Noe. “I thought ‘this is great’ we’re meeting the need. And then our wait list started growing and growing and growing and with the onset of COVID-19, we saw those numbers drastically increase. We currently have 85 women on our wait list and that was something that was keeping me up at night.”
Noe says the wait list time is critical.
When a person chooses recovery, they have made the decision that they want to fight for their mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health and at the same time, they don’t have access yet to the tools, support and resources.
Currently, the wait for a bed in the residential facility is about three to five months.
“They’re really hanging by a thread, waiting for a bed,” said Noe.
She said the fear is that the individual relapses “or even overdoses.”
But starting Thursday, the women on the wait list will no longer be hanging on by a thread.
“They’ll be able to meet with their peer case manager as often as they need. They’ll be able to receive weekly therapy sessions and they’ll be able to come here for therapeutic group,” said Noe.
She said individual teams will be able to make sure their client has a safe place to stay.
“We also hope to provide meals and provide them with incentives like bus passes and gift cards,” said Noe.
Recovery isn’t easy
“It was a lot harder than I thought,” said Dove Recovery House alum Lauren Fraser.
When she first learned about Dove Recovery House, she had nowhere to go. The then-31 year old had been using since she was a teenager.
“They showed me love that I had never felt before, that I didn’t have for myself,” said Fraser. “If it wasn’t for Dove, I don’t know that it would have worked for me.”
“Recovery is a lot different than sobriety. Sobriety is just not using or drinking anymore. Recovery is getting down to the root, getting down to the cause. What caused you to use, why are you numbing yourself, why are you running away from everything?” Fraser said.
For some, the scars are deeply rooted in trauma, and having an all-female environment helps create a safe place to allow those in recovery to become vulnerable.
“Ripping off those band-aids and becoming vulnerable, that’s just something you don’t usually get to go through with people. So we went through some of the hardest times together and we’re just bonded for life after going through that,” said Fraser. “My sponsor is someone that I found there, and she is someone that three years later I share that bond with.”
Fraser has been in recovery for three years, but her recovery journey started with a 62-day wait list. She said she doesn’t know if she would have made it if the wait list had been months, like it is during the pandemic. But with an outpatient/outreach center like the one Dove launched on Wednesday, Fraser said she would have had that sense of connection that would have let her know she “made the right choice, it’s just not my time yet.”
Through recovery, Fraser said she was able to discover what brought her joy in life, to reconnect with music and find her passion and purpose in life. She said she was able to find out who she was meant to be and to then live it.
If you or a loved one needs help, you can call 211 to be connected to services.
For an admission application visit this link or call (317) 964-0450 x 108 or email info@doverecoveryhouse.org to schedule an assessment.