美国国家公共电台 NPR Houston Methadone Clinics Reopen After Harvey's Flooding

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We are closely tracking a record-breaking Hurricane Irma, the most powerful Atlantic Ocean storm ever recorded. And we're still learning about the impact from Harvey in Texas and Louisiana. The health care system has certainly been disrupted there. As NPR's Rebecca Hersher reports, clinics that offer methadone and other opioid-addiction¹ therapies are just getting back up and running.

REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE²: Stormy Trout³ is waiting for a ride, sitting on a hot curb⁴ outside an opioid treatment clinic in north Houston.

STORMY TROUT: You know, cravings and anxiety, like, it's just treacherous⁵. It really is.

HERSHER: As the city flooded last week, Trout was going through opioid withdrawal⁶ at a detox center surrounded by water.

TROUT: I'm like, I know I can do this, but I just need something to help with the cravings, and the anxiety and stuff.

HERSHER: That something is methadone. But she had to wait until Tuesday to start. Clinics all over the region that dispense⁷ methadone, buprenorphine and other drug treatments for people addicted⁸ to opioids were cut off or flooded themselves for most of the week. The one she went to, called Texas Clinic, was stranded⁹ by water for days. Now they're cleaning the carpets and playing strangely appropriate music in the waiting room.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD LOVIN'")

THE RASCALS¹⁰: (Singing) I asked my family doctor just what I had.

HERSHER: Farrukh Shamsi is the director. He made sure someone was there every day of the storm - and good thing. Some people who rely on methadone to function did extraordinary things to get there.

FARRUKH SHAMSI: They were very creative. We had people that parked five miles away and walked. They started in the morning. They got here really late. We medicated them. Then they were going to walk all the way back to their car so they could get back home.

HERSHER: He says Houston is a gateway¹¹ for illicit¹² drugs, including heroin¹³. And anecdotally, he's seeing something unexpected after the storm.

SHAMSI: What the storm did - it is caused the illegal drug network supply to be shut off. It could not get here, right? So the best thing to do is, why not try something legal? And so this is a good thing, actually, in a way, a silver lining¹⁴ in a cloud - is that people could actually come in here, and get treatment for the first time, and make their lives better and actually get off of drugs when they were maybe thinking about it, but now they're forced to get off of drugs.

HERSHER: Shamsi says this week is a recovery week for his clinic - being fully¹⁵ open, trying to get back to a more normal schedule and handling patients who come from the shelters that are still open.

On Tuesday morning, the mental health team at the George R. Brown Convention Center arrived to find a line of about 20 people.

CRYSTAL COLLIER: These are evacuees¹⁶ who are coming off of drugs for the first time or they've been in and out of recovery before, and they've been using this whole time and now are really, truly detoxing.

HERSHER: Dr. Crystal Collier is a psychologist with The Council on Recovery who's been volunteering at the big shelters for days. She says, for people struggling with opioid addiction who are flooded out of their homes, the shelters can only do so much.

COLLIER: If you're detoxing, or if you need to get a Suboxone treatment or methadone treatments, it's going to be impossible to get it at a shelter.

HERSHER: That's because public shelters generally don't prescribe opioid treatments on site. It's partly because people need to be screened relatively¹⁷ carefully to make sure they're getting the right therapy.

COLLIER: I mean, so many people just showed up with what they had in their hands because it happened so quickly. And so we're having to help people get their birth certificate, or Social Security or a card before we can actually get them into a treatment system because we got to have proof of who they are.

HERSHER: Collier says the next challenge will be helping¹⁸ people who are uprooted¹⁹ and traumatized find the stability they need to avoid relapsing. Rebecca Hersher, NPR News, Houston.

(SOUNDBITE OF TACOMA NARROWS BRIDGE DISASTER'S "TWENTY")