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Recovery in the News
Ex-addicts gaining role in city treatment approach
Damon C. Williams
Philadelphia Daily News
October 9, 2008
Sometimes, it takes one to know one.
And in the case of the city Department of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services, it takes a recovering addict to properly treat an addict trying to escape a life of drug use.
That is the key idea behind the department's Recovery Transformation project, which announced yesterday a reformed system, three years in the making, for treating drug addicts.
Previously, doctors and other professionals would dictate to those in recovery what services they would need with little regard to individual condition.
But the new system allows addicts to have more input in their treatment and puts former addicts in paid positions in which they can assist others in recovery.
"This has been a three-year process of modifying our system, annually making changes," said Arthur C. Evans, the program's director. "We realized that if [former addicts] had chronic conditions, then they need long-term support. This systematic change has had a tremendous impact on people engaged in recovery."
Gil Gadson, a former addict of 33 years, went through the program and has become an on-staff recovery manager and peer specialist. Drug-free the last 18 months, Gadson said this reform was a long time in coming.
"This program is more realistic" than the way addicts have been treated in the past, Gadson said. "The transformation is a hands-on approach. Everyone is involved in their own treatment."
"Who knows better than those who went through it?" Gadson asked.
Gadson, one of the success stories among hundreds of former addicts, spoke yesterday of having a new life and aspirations after completing the program.
Robert Martin, a former addict involved in the program, said: "I used to sleep on the streets in Center City, and now I'm living and not dying. I have been free from drug addiction for five years, and free from my mental illness for six years.
"At first I wasn't able to get the support I needed; now, it's great."