Underlying causes and intervention: District 6 candidates talk treating addiction – Johnson City Press (subscription)

Tim Hicks addiction started early in life around the time he was 13 years old.

By the time I was 19, I was pretty much a full-blown alcoholic, he said. By the time I was 22 years old, I had been in and out of several treatment facilities.

Hicks said he ultimately managed to leave that life behind 18 years ago, successfully bucking his addiction to drugs and alcohol through a combination of treatment, lifestyle changes, work experience and faith-based counseling.

Hicks said he needed a life-changing experience, one that involved changing multiple aspects of his routine, including his friends.

If you want to be a banker, hang around bankers, he said. If you want to be a baseball player, hang around baseball players. If you want to be a good person, hang around good people, and I think thats a key point in recovery.

After unseating incumbent state House Rep. Micah Van Huss, R-Jonesborough, during the Republican primary in August, Hicks will now face Democrat Brad Batt in the general election for the District 6 seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives.

The two candidates recently sat down with the Johnson City Press to discuss their views on addiction treatment in Northeast Tennessee, a region that has been a flashpoint in the fight against opioid abuse.

Batt said treatment is important, but there also needs to be a focus on the underlying factors that lead to addiction.

I think a lot of these issues are an outcome of economic insecurity, Batt said, noting that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has only strengthened the financial headwinds that households are fighting against.

Batt pointed out that about 45% of households in Washington County fall below the federal poverty line or are part of the ALICE population, an acronym that stands for asset-limited, income constrained, employed. ALICE families live above the poverty line, but dont make enough to afford the cost of living.

Now with COVID, you have even more strain on working families, Batt said, and those sorts of pressures and stresses combined with a lack of access to healthcare contribute to these addiction issues.

Opioid addiction, Batt said, in some cases starts when an injury is treated with painkillers because the patient cant get needed rehabilitative health care.

Weve got to make sure we focus on not just treating the symptoms, which is the addiction, but the disease, which is economic insecurity, lack of health care, lack of options, he said. Weve got to look at it from a big-picture standpoint. Not just the addiction treatment part.

A builder who owns a custom home construction company in Gray, Hicks said experience in a trade helped him during recovery and can play an integral role in treatment, giving recovering addicts a way to occupy their minds.

It helps you to get up early in the morning, it helps you to sleep better at night, Hicks said. Theres just many different avenues that a job helps. ... But I think the most important thing that it does is it makes you feel better about yourself.

Faith-based counseling, Hicks said, can also act as a way to instill hope in those seeking treatment.

Hicks said the region has a strong slate of 28-day programs, but the area needs a sober living facility, which Hicks said can help recovering addicts relearn life skills and would ideally provide a path to workforce development.

The problem is after the 28 days, Hicks said. Thats where were really messing up.

Currently, Hicks said many people exiting a 28-day program in Tennessee have to travel elsewhere to seek treatment through a sober living facility.

You have a 28-day program, which basically gets you started in a direction, and then what were doing now is were dumping them back into the same situation that they came out of, he said. I think that we need a sober-living facility coupled with faith-based ministries.

Talking opioid treatment, Hicks has expressed opposition to Suboxone, a drug used in medication-assisted treatment designed to help wean people off opioids.

In a Facebook post, Hicks campaign linked the countys relatively high density of Suboxone clinics to a 200% increase in drug-related crime over the past seven years, according to the Addiction Center, which the post said occurred as other forms of crime were decreasing.

Washington County is the Suboxone capital of Tennessee, the post read. Replacing one addiction with another isnt working.

Dr. Wesley Geminn, the chief pharmacist with the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, said he hasnt seen evidence to support the idea that Suboxone clinics lead to increased crime in their surrounding area.

Its not the crime that Im worried about, Hicks said during a recent interview. What Im worried about is wrecking peoples lives, people not getting a fresh start ... at life and a different way of life.

Hicks said common sense tells him trading one drug for another isnt a long-term solution for recovery.

I just have a hard time with that, Hicks said. It holds people back to where they cannot get that life-changing experience.

Hicks also expressed concern about whether drugs used in medication-assisted treatment could play a role in spurring neonatal abstinence syndrome. Additionally, he questioned whether the predominant drugs of choice in the region are best treated with that methodology, which is used to manage heroin and opioid addictions.

Reiterating that its important to address the underlying causes of addiction, Batt said no treatment is off the table, but medication-assisted treatment isnt a panacea.

Its not going to get it done on its own, he said, adding that patients also need to receive mental health treatment to identify the root causes of their addiction.

Excerpt from:
Underlying causes and intervention: District 6 candidates talk treating addiction - Johnson City Press (subscription)