INLAND EMPIRE, Calif. – Across California, 31 hospitals in communities hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic are taking a new approach.
When people using opioid drugs come in for any kind of medical attention no matter the time of day or night, they can now get help. The California Bridge Program offers treatment 24/7 for people hooked on opioids including a new game-changing detox medication.
One man in the Inland Empire says it saved his life.
“It’s hard to be a junkie. It’s a hard life,” said Jackie Amason Junior of Chino.
He has been using substances to numb the pain most of his life.
“I started drinking when I was 9. A child molester got ahold of me got me drinking and I never quit,” Amason said.
Amason has overdosed twice, once intentionally, but he was resuscitated each time.
“18 years old first time I tried heroin… and I messed with it ever since,” Amason said.
He tried to get clean in the past but failed because he says, “The withdraws from methadone were worse than heroin.”
In June, with abscess all over his body, he walked into the Emergency Room at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center and met Dr. Michael Sequeira, someone who knows the signs of habitual drug use well.
“It’s been terrible there is a constant onslaught within the Emergency Department,” Dr. Sequeira said.
Dr. Sequeira says doctors were judged on how well they relieved pain, overprescribed, and then in turn judged patients when they developed addictions.
“People with opioid use disorder are afraid to come in because they are used to coming into the emergency departments or doctors’ offices and being humiliated. We force them to lie and it’s almost a hostile relationship,” Dr. Sequeira said.
The California Bridge Program aims to change that with a new approach including a new philosophy called “harm reduction.”
“Basically de-stigmatize opioid use. We don’t use heroin addiction anymore we call it opioid use disorder,” Dr. Sequeira said.
Along with that strategy comes a key new weapon, a new detox drug called buprenorphine or suboxone.
“It works as an opioid to relieve pain, but it also prevents them from overdosing and the nice thing is that is prevents the withdraw symptoms,” Dr. Sequeira said.
“Well they started detoxing me right then because I was on a quarter gram of heroin…The medication works amazingly. I had no withdraw symptoms,” Amason touted.
Amason has been taking suboxone now for about three months and working with Wendy Martinez, a Substance Use Navigator who was assigned his case the night he came into the ER.
“The navigator’s job is different than any other counseling drug counselor job that there is out there because they do have access to us 24/7,” Martinez said.
She lost both her father and her children’s father to overdoses.
“I grew up around heroin my whole life so I can connect with my patients on a level that some doctors and nurses might not be able to,” Martinez said.
If it weren’t for Dr. Sequeira, the new ideology, and medication Amason says he would in a very different place, maybe even dead. He recently lost two friends.
Before the Bridge Program, doctors would refer patients in the E.R. to outpatient recovery programs. Substance abuse navigators are helping to change the system and get people the help they need.
Southern California hospitals in the Bridge Program include:
- Arrowhead Regional Medical Center – Colton
- Harbor-UCLA Medical Center – Torrance
- Olive View-UCLA Education & Research Institute – Los Angeles
- San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital – Banning
- St. Joseph Health & St. Mary's Medical Center – Apple Valley
- UC Irvine Medical Center – Orange
- LAC+USC Medical Center – Los Angeles