SANFORD — Heather Walker was in a quandary. She’d been in a state-funded treatment program for opioid addiction but the funding was ending. Determined to kick her habit, she explored her one possible option: Walker walked into Sanford Police Department and asked for help.

She knew the department had secured a grant to help addicts without insurance. 

Walker was accepted into the program, and she is doing well.

So are others enrolled in the program, which kicked off this summer. The $195,000 grant funds outpatient services for those addicted to opioids who are referred by Sanford Police after an interview. Treatment is provided by Grace Street Services and Nasson Heath Care. The programs include intensive outpatient therapy with mandatory counseling sessions that start with a full week of meetings that gradually decrease over time as the client progresses. The treatment includes frequent drug testing and medication in the form of Subutex, which is similar to suboxone.

Police Chief Tom Connolly has long been a proponent of evidence-based, medically-assisted treatment programs for those who are addicted. 

“There are two things you need,” to quit, said Connolly. “You need a willingness and a desire to quit. That’s key. And you need a community-based, evidence-based program.”

There have been 28 referrals to the grant funded program so far and there are currently 16 folks enrolled. Connolly gets regular reports, so he knows how clients are doing. Most seem to be doing well, including Walker.

Connolly spoke of one client, a man whom he described as a career criminal with a lengthy history of drug use, who came seeking help. 

“He told me he’d stopped using,” said Connolly and had been buying suboxone on the street to help keep him away from heroin. The individual was accepted into the program. Connolly said he had one bad drug test, but his attitude is positive.

“His prognosis is good. And for a person with his history, that is outstanding,” Connolly said.

There have been some who haven’t done as well. Two clients  failed to show up for mandatory sessions and tested positive for  drug use; one moved; and another was removed from the program for selling their medication, he said. 

Walker has been clean and sober for eight months, marking her sobriety with a Facebook post earlier this week. She readily admits that almost six months of her sobriety came at York County Jail. She began the Sanford program at the end of July.

Walker, 31, said she got involved with opioids the way others have — after back problems she encountered while she worked as a nursing assistant, and after a car crash. 

“I had back surgery, and they throw pills at you,” she said in an interview in downtown Sanford on Wednesday. Then, she said, her doctor cracked down and she no longer had a prescription for opioids. She began buying on the street, but the pills were expensive and at one point she was offered a cheaper alternative — heroin.

Her addiction got “really bad “in 2014 and 2015, she said, and she’s done things she’s not proud of. She served 50 days in jail for theft and burglary, and because she behaved while there and worked in the jail trusty program, her incarceration was reduced  from the 75 days she was originally supposed to serve of a four-year sentence for theft and burglary.

Released from jail at the end of August 2016, Walker said she relapsed within three months. She said her probation officer caught on and she tested positive for fentanyl. She went back to jail in February and was released at the end of July — and made her way to Sanford Police, seeking admission to the program.

While all this had been happening, Walker’s 8-year-old daughter was in foster care. She said her parental rights were recently terminated, and she is in the process of appealing that decision. Walker is working at a local fast food restaurant and said she’s grateful she’s been hired — work for those convicted of felonies isn’t always easy to come by, she pointed out, particularly for those convicted of theft.

So far, she’s graduated from the first phase of the program at Grace Street Services, moving from mandatory three-hour meetings five days a week, down to three days a week. 

“This is not my first attempt at being sober, but its my most successful,” said Walker. “I have supervision, I’m in a supportive relationship and no one around me does drugs.”

Walker said her success is bittersweet. She’s happy she is doing so well, but she knows appealing the termination of her parental rights is an uphill battle — a situation she’s said she’s not sure she can fix, no matter how hard she tries.

Connolly said staying away from folks who are using drugs helps with recovery. He said those looking to kick the habit should be in a living situation where they’re not around people who are using.

He said the program is working well, barring some hiccups, like the cumbersome method of how the department now pays for program members’ prescription renewals that he hopes can change.

The Sanford grant expires in June. Connolly is hoping it will be renewed. 

“The biggest problem we have is we’re trying to kill (drug abuse) from the supply side and the way to kill it is from the demand side,”  said Connolly. “We’ve tried to do the supply side for 40 years.”

Walker said she got tired of the way she was living — spending the day finding the money to buy drugs — and then finding and using the drugs.

“I want to make it,”  she said.

— Senior Staff Writer Tammy Wells can be contacted at 324-4444 (local call in Sanford) or 282-1535, ext. 327 or twells@journaltribune.com.