County faces cold turkey

Well, Gov. Chris Gregoire is about to give low-income drunks and addicts one more excuse for staying that way.

She's cutting the state funding of The Recovery Centers of King County (RCKC) so deeply, and so quickly, they're going to have to close in three weeks.

"I just felt sick to my stomach," said CEO Pat Knox, after spending the last several days crunching numbers and finally giving up.

I can't blame her, since it breaks down like this: The agency is losing $439,333 for the first six months of this year. Then, they don't know if funding will be restored in July. It's like losing half your salary now, and not knowing if you'll be on the payroll after June.

Every year since 1995, when the county closed its own detox center, the Recovery Centers have admitted some 3,800 adults from hospital emergency rooms, where they arrived under the influence of alcohol, opiates, meth or cocaine.

Ninety-eight percent of them can't pay for treatment.

The RCKC charges the county $190 a day to keep them in detox. From there, it's on to chemical-dependency treatment. (Substance abusers who are mentally ill are stabilized and helped with managing their disorders).

The RCKC's Intensive Inpatient Program (IIP) has a completion rate of 98.6 percent — exceeding the statewide rate of 79 percent. And patients who complete IIP are much more likely to get into long-term recovery, reducing their potential for recidivism, emergency room visits and incarcerations.

Center services are considered so essential, that when the RCKC building was damaged in the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, FEMA paid for the repairs.

Without the centers, the only places where the poor can detox are county hospitals, which charge the county about $700 a day for detox — more than three times RCKC's rate.

Or, people won't go into detox at all. They'll become a problem for police, the court and jail systems. You and me.

"The RCKC is their only portal for getting help," said Dr. Mick Oreskovich medical director and CEO of the Washington Physicians Health Program, and a RCKC board member.

Studies have shown that for every dollar invested in treatment, society saves $7, Oreskovich said.

"Without detox, people are going to be in all the neighborhoods, in all the places where they can beg money, or steal," Knox said. "They are going to be out there because they have got to survive."

Wanda Weathersby was one of them. The former heroin addict spent her days trying to get drugs.

"Scamming, all crazy kinds of stuff that I shouldn't have been doing," she said.

She went through the RCKC's 28-day program and is now sober and attending school to be a medical- or business-records processor.

"I couldn't have afforded the program on my own, and I can tell you, it is money well spent," Weathersby said. "There is no one out there who knows that better than us."

Lawmakers should listen to Weathersby and others like her, to see not only what their dollars are really doing, but what they are truly worth.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

Keep it up, Wanda Proud of you.