Former addict joins Unite for Youth at state meeting to address opioid crisis

Adam Hoffman, a Troy resident and former drug user, traveled to Helena for a Montana Governor’s Office meeting addressing opioid abuse in Montana on Aug. 15.

Hoffman and his wife, Katie, were representing the recovery community at the meeting, which brought together all those invested in two types of state government funding — Drug Free Communities, which provides the majority of funding for Unite For Youth Lincoln County, and High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area funding, which supports law enforcement programs.

Hoffman was motivated to attend the meeting by his experience of recovering after a period of drug addiction.

“Our community lacks any detox center, or sober living facility,” Hoffman said in an Aug. 24 interview. “The closest treatment facility is a five-hour drive for us in Troy.”

The lack of treatment at a time when Hoffman decided to get clean was a serious limitation to his recovery, he said.

Maggie Anderson and Vel Shaver of Lincoln County Unite For Youth encouraged the Hoffmans to attend the meeting. Anderson and Shaver also attended, aiming to identify and address what is needed by Lincoln County to prevent and treat drug abuse.

“The idea is to bring these two funding sources together to support one another,” said Anderson. “We had five drug-free communities represented and what we heard from the drug trafficking representatives was ‘we need help.’”

Shaver and Anderson agreed the meeting was unprecedented at the state level, and said that Helen Hernandez of the Office of National Drug Control said in her address how cooperative Montana agencies were.

“We know that, despite the miles that separate us, we are mighty together,” said Anderson.

The meeting was also attended by representatives from Montana Highway Patrol, Child Protective Services, the offices of Sen. Steve Daines and Sen. Jon Tester, and Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, among others.

After working on bringing together different agencies at a county level with Unite for Youth, Shaver knew the statewide meeting must not be “just about sharing information.” She presented an action plan at the meeting with three main takeaways.

“The first was connecting the agencies and organizations who attended the meeting,” Shaver said. “The second was an extreme lack of detox and treatment centers in our state, and the third was to acknowledge and address that over-prescribing exists in Montana.”

Anderson said that Attorney General Fox underscored the second action item when he revealed in his address that 65,000 people in Montana are actively seeking treatment for drug addiction at any time, and that there are 6,000 beds in treatment facilities available in the state.

This statistic was profoundly felt by the Hoffman’s when Adam was seeking treatment.

Hoffman’s wife, Katie, who is not a drug user but supported her husband through his addiction, said the meeting helped her feel less alone having dealt with her husband’s drug abuse.

“I learned that Adam’s drug problem wasn’t the only one in Montana and that there is many more people that need help,” she said. “Learning this helped me understand my life and the situations we’ve been in.”

Shaver said Adam Hoffman’s biggest advocate has been his wife, who spent weeks on the phone trying to find him a place to detox.

“Many people don’t have that (an advocate),” said Shaver. “And even with an advocate, I heard Adam say that the stress of trying to find treatment made him want to use again. You have to strike when the iron is hot with someone who wants to get clean, because hours later things can change.”

Lincoln County is one of two drug free communities who, along with Cascade County, have actively addressed the third action item, over-prescribing, Shaver said.

“As many people now know, we had problems in Lincoln County with two physicians over prescribing opioids,” Anderson said. “Things are a lot better since that was resolved.”

Anderson said there is still a long way to go to change prescribing culture. As an example, she noted that while most people need strong pain relief in the form of opioids for only one to three days after surgery, many are provided with a 30-day prescription and, following what they assume are doctors orders, take all the pills.

Addiction to opioids can kick in as early as five days into a prescription, said Shaver, but the after tremors of recovering from an addiction can last “a very long time.”

Katie Hoffman said that the meeting in Helena emphasized for her that “pills can very addictive and that addiction can send you to worse drugs.”

Moving forward, Anderson said the outcomes gathered from the governor’s office meeting, combined with those from a Centers for Disease Control strategic planning meeting on Aug. 28 — which Shaver and Anderson will attend — will be included in a final state planning meeting on Nov. 7.

Unite for Youth is working with youth leaders at Libby High School to contribute to a bill addressing over-prescription that’s due to be formulated in the 2019 legislative session.

“Policy is where real change can happen” and high school kids can see clearly the places where things need to change, Anderson said.

“This (opioid and meth addiction) is a crisis now,” said Shaver. “But we do not need to assign this to the children today.”