Columbus Regional Health’s Treatment and Support Center (TASC) is starting to regain a sense of normality after months of coronavirus-related restrictions.
But TASC is now contending with what staff believe are some of the dire consequences of the pandemic — including a substantial rise in substance abuse and relapses.
The treatment center, at 2630 22nd St., which will soon celebrate its second anniversary, saw “a lot of people” fall out of treatment during the pandemic while the facility temporarily shut its doors and shifted many of its services online or over the phone, said Dr. Kevin Terrell, TASC medical director.
This past fall, TASC started bringing clients back into the facility for in-person treatment, and restarted group therapy in March, albeit with patients wearing masks and adhering to social distancing guidelines, Terrell said.
At about the same time that on site group therapy resumed, TASC started to see a significant increase in the number of people seeking help with substance abuse disorders, including an “enormous number” of new clients, Terrell said.
“We’re not just having a return of people who use to come to us, we’re having an enormous number of new people who have never been seen here who are coming to get treatment,” Terrell said.
Since July, at least 422 people have sought treatment at TASC for substance abuse disorders, including at least 168 since March, according to figures provided by Rachel Maass-O’Haver, TASC program manager.
TASC, which opened its doors in July 2019, provides a range of outpatient treatments for substance abuse disorders including medication-assisted treatment in certain cases.
Since opening its doors in July 2019, the treatment center has seen higher-than-anticipated demand for drug treatment fueled by an epidemic of addiction to painkillers, heroin, methamphetamine and other substances that swept into Bartholomew County, resulting in at least 101 fatal drug overdoses from 2017 to 2020.
The treatment center saw 596 unique patients in roughly its first year, far surpassing CRH’s initial one-year projection of around 200 to 250 patients and nearly matching the five-year projection of 600 patients, CRH officials said in earlier interviews.
That demand, Terrell said, remains high, particularly given the number of people in treatment who relapsed during the pandemic or started using substances to cope with stress and isolation.
“I think there’s just been more demand as a result of the increase in substance use that has occurred among people who previously were in recovery, (and) potentially people who had never used before turned to substances because of loneliness, stresses of life,” Terrell said.
‘Worrisome’ trends
Additionally, some “worrisome” trends have emerged over the past year that Terrell fears could continue to drive up local drug overdose deaths.
Currently, more than half of people who are seeking help at TASC for heroin abuse are testing negative for the drug, but turn out to be using a more potent and lethal substitute — fentanyl — including many people who don’t even know they’ve been using it, Terrell said.
“What we’re seeing that’s different and new for us is that over the last several months, we have people who come in who will tell us that they used heroin last night,” Terrell said. “We will do a urine test on them, and they don’t have heroin in their system. They have fentanyl in their system.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid prescribed in the form of patches or lozenges that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and often sold illegally for its heroin-like effect.
The synthetic opioid is increasingly being laced with other drugs, including methamphetamine, because it is cheaper and more powerful, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Terrell said it is very difficult to tell the difference between fentanyl and heroin by looking at them.
“Fentanyl is really hitting our community hard,” Terrell said. “…That has probably contributed to some of our rise in overdose deaths here. People who use a certain amount of heroin, if they use that same amount of fentanyl, they’re very likely to overdose.”
“I worry that the overdose rate is going to continue to rise,” Terrell said.
Currently, the most common substances that people are seeking help with at TASC are methamphetamine and opioids, Terrell said.
Sounding the alarm
Terrell’s concerns echo similar worries in the community.
In May, the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress (ASAP), the Columbus Police Department, the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department and Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop issued a joint warning to the community after a spike in overdose deaths.
During the first four months of 2021, police and deputies responded to more drug overdoses and suspected overdoses than during this same time period in previous years.
Bartholomew County Coroner Clayton Nolting said in a previous interview that the big concern is the amount of fentanyl being seen in the overdose cases.
“The big takeaway from this is that the amount of fentanyl we are seeing is much higher than we have seen before,” Nolting said. “We are seeing an overall drastic increase.”
Terrell, for his part, said he and his staff at TASC remain very busy and have hired an additional therapist and plan to hire a case manager and recovery coach to keep pace.
“We’re expanding in numbers and also different types of personnel that we’ve not had before but we’ve just found that we need,” Terrell said.
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For more information about Columbus Regional Health’s Treatment and Support Center (TASC), visit www.crh.org/physician-practices/treatment-and-support-center.
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