N.J. addicts suffer from shortage of drug treatment facilities
Sunday November 10, 2013, 12:33 AM
BY REBECCA D. O’BRIEN
STAFF WRITER
The Record
Three months after fleeing a Florida rehabilitation center, Amanda, a 24-year-old from Woodcliff Lake, was using heroin again. She stole her grandmother’s credit card, bought thousands of dollars worth of electronics and sold them in Paterson for drugs.
Which is how Amanda’s parents came to spend a Friday evening this July driving across New Jersey, their strung-out daughter in the back seat, looking for a facility that could treat her.
“We called eight or nine places,” Amanda’s father, James, recalled. “Nobody had a bed. Nobody.”
Insurance wouldn’t cover detoxification in an emergency room, rehabilitation clinics wouldn’t take her until she was clean, but every detoxification unit had dayslong waits for admission, James said. At a hospital in Summit, James encountered hallways full of “moaning and groaning” addicts waiting for beds and insurance clearance, he said. James was told at the front desk that if he paid cash, there might be a bed for Amanda the next morning.
A friend gave Amanda some Suboxone, a drug used to treat opioid addiction, so she could spend the night at her parents’ house. The next morning, they found a facility in Kearny that could take her.
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