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SARATOGA COUNTY — During Jay Harrington’s third stint in prison, he decided he wanted to focus on his recovery journey.
“Recovery starts when you say you’re in recovery,” he said.
His recovery from an addiction that included a mix of cocaine and heroin and sometimes benzodiazepines began when he was 19. Nothing ever stuck though.
“I did the AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] before,” he said. “I did the NA [Narcotics Anonymous] before. That didn’t quite work for me.”
Finally one day Harrington decided he needed to explore what recovery options worked for him.
That’s when Harrington turned to reading.
“A lot of that had nothing to do with recovery but how successful people change their life because I knew my problem was my thinking,” he said. “So if I could figure out how to think happy I could be happy. Then I learned about what self-talk does, how to reframe situations, how to change language that would be less stigmatizing and really that empowered me to change my life.”
Five years later Harrington, an Amsterdam resident who now works for Healing Springs in Saratoga Springs, is still sober. To him being sober means he doesn’t have any mind-altering drugs in his system. Not drugs. Not alcohol.
A certified recovery peer advocate, Harrington uses his experiences to aid others with their recovery. Healing Springs, which offers peer support, skill building and other avenues to encourage people to stay sober, is just one of the many organizations Saratoga County partners with to assist people in recovery. County officials hope that by providing resources like Healing Springs and others it can understand, educate and prevent substance use disorder.
By the numbers
To date there have been 186 total overdoses in the county this year, with 12 of them being fatal, according to the county’s dashboard, which uses six primary sources to track data surrounding overdoses in the community. In 2022 there were a total of 671 overdoses for the year, 48 of which were fatal.
If this year’s trend continues, with around 186 overdoses every four months, the county is on track to see another increase this year.
However, increases in overdoses isn’t new in the county. Between 2018 and 2022 the county saw a 49.4% increase in overdoses.
Drug-related overdose fatalities doubled from 2019 to 2020 and then remained relatively the same between 2020 and 2022 with around 50 deaths each year.
Nationwide drug overdose deaths have quintupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Over the last several months Saratoga County has been holding clinics to train people on how to use Narcan, otherwise known as Naloxone, a nasal spray used to treat opiate overdoses.
The goal is to hold training sessions in every municipality in the county, said Phil Barrett, the chairman of the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors’ Health and Human Services Committee and Clifton Park supervisor.
Narcan training
Malta resident Jack Cronen was one of several people to receive Narcan training at the Malta Community Center on March 30.
Cronen had been an emergency medical technician in New Jersey for years, so Narcan was nothing new to him. But he said times have changed. Back then he said there were a lot of heroin overdoses.
“Nothing like it is today,” he said, noting there are way more overdoses now.
While at the community center Cronen received a quick refresher in administering Narcan, receiving a kit with two doses and picking up another for a friend.
“A lot of people don’t realize you should have one,” he said.
He said while people may be ashamed to do the training due to stigma surrounding the topic, everyone should.
Saratoga County Sheriff’s Capt. Daniel Morley said the training is life-saving.
“People forget that the dots on the maps that we see all the time represent actual people,” he said.
He also said with Narcan training comes breaking down the stigma associated with substance use disorder.
@dgazette Saratoga County pushes fight against opioid, overdose epidemic – 4/18/23 – More at DailyGazette.com – Daily Gazette
“I think this is one of the rare situations where everybody either knows somebody personally or knows of somebody who’s been affected by this crisis,” Morley said.
But one of the biggest deterrents to the fight against the opioid and overdose epidemic is stigma, Morley said.
“It’s a diagnosable medical disease,” he said. “It has the ability to respond to effective treatment and stigma kills. We have to treat it in such a way that people have the dignity that we would give to somebody that has, say, high blood pressure conditions; it’s no different.”
Morley said stigma makes preventing overdoses more difficult.
“How do you really get into the prevention aspect of it without kind of furthering the stigma of it and driving people further into the shadows, but it’s never your kid, until it’s your kid,” he said.
Healing Springs Center Director Lillian McCarthy said that many people who have substance use disorder are made to feel dirty, stupid and like they aren’t a productive part of society. Those feelings leave people in silence. But McCarthy said people need to talk about substance use disorder.
“Let’s recover out loud,” she said. “Addiction is a disease. We don’t shame you if you have cancer. We don’t shame you if you have diabetes.”
One way the county is trying to combat stigma is through additional measures like bringing in speakers to discuss the topic.
New resources to help
“I can’t announce it yet but we’re going to have a nationally known speaker coming to the county to give several presentations in the fall,” Barrett said.
The idea to bring in speakers came from discussions Barrett and Mental Health Department Director Dr. Michael Prezioso had with families that have loved ones who are facing substance use disorder or have died from it. The county also plans to have speakers specifically for families and to get speakers into schools.
The other insight the families provided to the county was the need for a family navigator.
“Having somebody you can contact as a first step is very valuable to these families because they’re facing so many obstacles and stressors and so if you have an initial contact that can help them navigate the system where they can identify areas to find help for their loved ones it’s invaluable,” Barrett said.
Barrett said the county has filled the family navigator position.
On top of the various speakers and family navigator position the county has created it has also purchased a spectrometer for the Sheriff’s Department. The tool, which is coming from Germany, will analyze drugs to determine what compounds are in them — like whether heroin is laced with fentanyl.
“That is going to be an absolute game changer for us in terms of public safety, in terms of knowing what’s in our drug supply, in terms of officer safety, EMS safety and knowing what we’re dealing with,” Morley said.
Barrett said he believes they will be the first county in the Capital Region to have such equipment.
Beyond understanding substance use disorder, educating about it and trying to prevent overdoses, the county has the Second Chance program and community partners it works with to aid people seeking recovery.
Aiding recovery
In April 2017 several members of the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Department went to the National Prescription Drug and Heroin Summit, where they learned about a program to follow up with people who overdose to see if they know about recovery options or would be interested in learning about them. That’s when the county’s Second Chance Program was born.
“I came back and I said we’re doing all these things for people who need car seats, people who wonder we have a program for and they’re all worthwhile programs but we’re doing nothing for somebody who overdoses,” Morley said. “We’re patting them on the back, putting them in an ambulance and saying good luck and then we’re acting very surprised a couple days later when they overdose again”
So, in August of that year the county started the Second Chance program and to date officers have done around 800 followups after an overdose. The method for following up has changed a bit following COVID — from in-person meetings to phone conversations — but Morley said they’re still able to get to people.
“I can’t think of any situations where we’ve had a negative interaction,” he said. “It’s been overwhelmingly positive.”
However, one thing he said the department didn’t count on was how many family members the department would be making referrals for.
“When they say addiction is a family disease, that’s definitely not an understatement,” Morley said.
One of the places Morley recommends to people is Healing Springs, where Harrington and others provide a space for meetings for groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, other programs like art or yoga and even a computer for people to search for a job or apartment.
For Harrington the center has helped him not only stay sober but rebuild relationships that had been affected by his addiction.
“Healthy relationships come into play,” he said. “How can I be healthy to be in a healthy relationship.”
The goal of the center, Harrington said, is to meet people where they are in recovery and empower them to make decisions to help them stay sober and it all begins with a conversation.
“Hopefully when people leave my office or wherever I’m talking to them they leave feeling positive,” he said. “That’s my goal is to keep them built up.”
Reporter Shenandoah Briere can be reached at [email protected].
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