EVERETT — Susan Martin is convinced that her heroin addiction would have killed her if she hadn’t started methadone treatment six months ago.
On Thursday, Martin and 60 other Snohomish County residents were finally able to get their medication closer to home instead of having to trek to a clinic in Shoreline.
Nearly a year after the Everett City Council said no to a methadone clinic downtown, the doors finally opened in south Everett at a new clinic run by Therapeutic Health Services, a Seattle nonprofit organization.
The convenience of a clinic in the midst of the most populated part of Snohomish County is intended to help former opiate addicts get back to normal lives.
Mike, 52, of Arlington, used to get up at 4:15 a.m. six days a week to drive as long as an hour and 15 minutes to a clinic in Shoreline. He asked that his last name be withheld.
A welder and recovering OxyContin addict, Mike said he missed about four hours of work time each week because he couldn’t get back to work on time after his 6 a.m. appointment in Shoreline.
"Now I’ll be losing only two hours a week," he said after gulping his dose of the bitter-tasting bright-red liquid from a paper cup. "That’s $34 more in pay."
Mike was one of three people who were waiting in the predawn darkness Thursday for the Everett clinic to open at 6 a.m.
Bob, 44, who lives north of Marysville, was with Mike. He also asked that his last name be withheld.
"I wanted to get here early so I can get used to the new routine," said Bob, who needs to get to his job at an auto-body shop in Marysville by 7 a.m. "This is going to make it much easier for me. I don’t have to be in such a rush to get to work now."
Therapeutic Health Services first proposed a methadone clinic in Snohomish County more than seven years ago. But it wasn’t until Monday, when the federal Drug Enforcement Administration approved the group’s application, that the proposal cleared its final hurdle.
All of the 107 clients who will use the clinic in its first days are Snohomish County residents.
Their transfer to the Everett clinic will free up 107 spots for King County addicts who have been on a waiting list for as long as nine months to get treatment at Therapeutic Health Services’ King County clinics, said Norman Johnson, the organization’s executive director.
On Thursday, Martin, 45, only had to drive 10 minutes from her Everett home to the clinic.
Her life started spiraling out of control in 1994 after she and her husband got hooked on heroin, she said. A weekly recreational habit turned into a daily addiction that ate up their savings and almost all of their weekly wages.
To get money to support their habit, buy food and keep up with house payments, her husband robbed more than a dozen banks in 1999 before he was caught and sent to a federal prison, where he is still confined, she said. Martin said she was arrested in 2002 after she tried to use a credit card from a wallet she stole at a wedding.
She wasn’t able to get the drug while in Snohomish County Jail for several weeks, and she stayed off heroin for eight months, she said.
But when a friend offered Martin heroin in June 2003 to console her after she lost her job, she couldn’t resist. She sank back into the same addictive quagmire, she said.
Martin realized she couldn’t quit heroin without help, so in July she enrolled in the Shoreline clinic’s recovery program, which combines methadone treatment with professional counseling.
"This place has given me my life back," Martin said, her eyes welling up with tears as she waited for her dose of methadone before rushing to her job as an administrative assistant for a caterer.
"If I didn’t have this, I’d probably relapse. When I was trying to quit on my own, I thought of heroin every day. Every day, my dragon was screaming to be fed. Methadone shuts that up," she said. "It’s a freedom I can’t even explain"
Martin pays $350 a month for her treatment under a clinic policy that is based on income. Some clients pay $400 a month, but that’s still about four times less than most heroin addicts spend each month to support their habits, Johnson said. Medicaid or private insurance pays for most clients’ treatment.
Martin said she is frustrated when people berate her for relying on methadone to stay off heroin.
Linda Madsen has heard the same criticism. After more than 12 years of treatment, she should be able to live without methadone, her friends and family members tell her.
But the Everett woman is convinced that she would go back to taking as many as 15 Percocet pills a day if she didn’t have methadone to stop her cravings for the powerful prescription painkiller, which she first started taking for back problems.
"It’s not as easy as you’d think to stop taking methadone," Madsen, 54, said. "I know I’m not ready. If I were to get off methadone, word would get out on the streets: ‘Linda’s off now.’ And they’d try to sell me Percocet. They prey on people."
Reporter David Olson:
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