Montana Meth Centers to Bring Innovative Treatment
By Dylan Tucker, 4-06-06
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Two new methamphetamine treatment facilities are in the works for Lewistown and Boulder, a step corrections officials believe will make a significant difference in the backlog of inmates awaiting treatment for addictions.
An 80-bed men’s treatment center will be constructed in Lewistown in February, and a 40-bed women’s center will follow in Boulder one month later. The two centers will admit inmates who are convicted of multiple offenses for meth possession. With Montana facing a rising meth problem, the number of beds are three times the number originally suggested by the Legislature for the project.
The centers will be built under partnerships with Community, Counseling and Correctional Services, Inc. and Boyd Andrew Community Services. The businesses received the highest scores from a committee that reviewed the proposed projects, which included Peg Shea, director of the Montana Meth Project.
Boulder’s center is estimated to cost $5.3 million, while construction estimates for the Lewistown center have not yet been released. The Boulder center contract is contingent upon State Land Board officials approving a land swap for the center from Corrections to Jefferson County at the board’s April 17 meeting.
The centers will cost roughly $5.2 million a year to operate, and triple the number of beds originally suggested by legislators. Prison officials say this will help meet a near-epidemic need for effective treatment of meth in Montana.
Treatment at the centers will be intensive: Based on the success of a small system now in place at the Montana Women’s Prison in Billings, addicts will spend nine months in the center, following a rigorous schedule comprised of chores, one-on-one counseling sessions and group therapy. The Matrix Program, as it is called, is designed specifically for meth addiction, which is particularly difficult to overcome long-term.
Of the more than 1,400 inmates at the Deer Lodge prison, roughly 1,100, or 80 percent, require drug or alcohol treatment, with numbers for meth treatment rapidly on the rise. But experts agree that meth addicts require longer, more intense treatment than the 60-day programs most inmates receive.
Up at 5 a.m. and in bed by 10 p.m., the program provides inmates with more than twice the amount of therapy sessions than existing treatment programs. After the nine-month program, graduates are released to a six-month stay at a prerelease center.
Despite the intensity of the program, it is less expensive than incarceration during the mandatory two-year stint for possession, say prison officials.
Department of Corrections Director Bill Slaughter has high hopes for the new centers, which he says reflect Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s goals to increase emphasis on treatment instead of incarceration for offenders.
“We’re heading down a road that will be beneficial to offenders, Montana taxpayers and the corrections system as a whole,” he said in a press release Tuesday.
Slaughter has been a strong advocate of innovative treatment techniques to combat meth addiction. His report to the Montana Legislature in 2005 outlined the staggering problem that Montana faces fighting meth.
“Many men and women who find themselves in prison are there not because the judge chose prison for them, but because they just cannot avoid drugs and alcohol while on probation, and, after numerous second chances, are revoked to prison,” Slaughter wrote.
Prison drug treatment counselors and other case workers have long argued the systems in place are largely ineffectual at breaking the cycle of crime, addiction and incarceration, and Slaughter believes the centers will help break the chain for more of Montana’s addicted offenders.
“This marks a new era for corrections in Montana,” Slaughter said. “One in which individualized programs to meet the unique and varying needs of offenders is the driving force.”
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Comments
Depending on who you're asking, only between 3-6% of Meth addicts will successfully make it through treatment and reach recovery -- a testament to the staggering challenge faced by addicts and treatment professionals alike.
A followup sample of 114 patients out of the 500 referred to in the Huber et al. (1997) report was followed at 2-5 years after treatment. There was a significant change in self-reported methamphetamine use in the 30 days prior to treatment (86% reporting use), and 30 days prior to follow-up (17.5% reporting use). Of the 54 who had reported daily use at baseline, 39 (72.2%) were abstinent at follow-up. At treatment admission 26% of the follow-up sample were employed compared to 62% employed at follow-up. Many users maintained sobriety for periods of more than two years.
What did the Matrix study consist of? Essentially, group meetings during the first four months (4-6 hrs/wk) and then twice weekly AA meetings.
Quite frankly, crystal meth is not physically addictive; users are prone to psychological dependence. There is no withdrawal as there is with alcohol or heroin. Essentially, when you want to stop, you simply stop. You don't even need help in the sense of hospitalization as you do for these other drugs, because stopping is not physically dangerous, as it is with really addicting drugs. The entire notion of a "War on Meth" is ridiculous. But note how it's been used to expand the powers of the Patriot Act...
The U.S. Congress recently added a provision to the USA Patriot Act, the “Combat Meth Act,” that requires stores to keep pseudoephedrine products locked behind counters and customers purchasing these products to present identification and register their purchase complete with a signature. Americans suffer from over one billion colds each year, according to the National Institute of Health. A government “watch list” of cold and allergy sufferers is a senseless waste of resources and an unwarranted infringement on privacy.
Meth use during the past four years has either declined or stayed flat, according to two major national drug-use studies. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that meth use did not increase at all from 2002 through 2004, the last year for which there is data. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future Study, which examines drug use among youth, actually shows a decline in meth use among high-school students from 1999 to 2005.
Approximately 600,000 Americans, representing less than 0.2 percent of the population, reported using meth in the past month, according to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health. In comparison, more than 120 million Americans, representing more than 50 percent of the population, reported using alcohol in the past month.