New on the streets: Drug for nerve pain boosts high for opioid abusers
Little testing
Nearly anyone arrested and found to struggle with addiction in Athens is given the option to go through a drug-court program to get treatment. But officials said that some exploit the absence of routine exams for gabapentin to get high while testing clean.
Brice Johnson, a probation officer at Athens County Municipal Court, said participants in the municipal court’s substance abuse mentally ill program undergo gabapentin testing only when abuse is suspected. Screenings are not regularly done on every client because gabapentin abuse has not been a concern and the testing adds expense, he said.
The rehab program run through the county prosecutor’s office, called Fresh Start, does test for gabapentin. Its latest round of screenings detected the drug in 5 of its roughly 238 active participants, prosecutor Keller Blackburn said.
Linda Holley, a clinical supervisor at an Athens outpatient program run by the Health Recovery Services, said she suspects at least half of her clients on Suboxone treatment abuse gabapentin. But the center can’t afford to regularly test every participant.
Ms. Holley said she sees clients who are prescribed gabapentin but, because of health privacy laws, she can’t share their status as a person in recovery to an outside provider without written consent. The restrictions give clients in recovery an opportunity to get high using drugs they obtained legally and still pass a drug test.
“With the gabapentin, I wish there were more we could do, but our hands are tied,” she said. “We can’t do anything but educate the client and discourage” them from using such medications.
Ms. Smith visited two separate doctors to secure a prescription. As she rotated through drug court, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, jail for relapsing on cocaine, and house arrest enforced with an ankle bracelet, she said her gabapentin abuse wasn’t detected until she arrived at the residential recovery center.
Today, Ms. Smith sticks to the recovery process. Expecting a baby in early July, her successful completion of the program not only means sobriety but also allows her the opportunity to restore custody of her eldest daughter and raise her children.
She intends to relocate her family away from the friends and routines that helped lead her to addiction and said she will help guide her daughter away from making similar mistakes.
“All I can do is be there and give her the knowledge that I can about addiction,” Ms. Smith said, “and hope that she chooses to go on the right path.”
Kaiser Health News is a national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
