Faith-based programs combat addiction in Erie County

Newsrooms across the commonwealth have spent years documenting the opioid crisis in their own communities. But now, in the special project State of Emergency: Searching for Solutions to Pennsylvania’s Opioids Crisis, we are marshalling resources to spotlight what Pennsylvanians are doing to try to reverse the soaring number of overdose deaths.

WITF is releasing more than 60 stories, videos and photos throughout July. This week, you will find stories about treatment facilities and recovery.

Phil Morris is a man with a mission.

He’s working with his pastor and others to combat addiction, in weekly small group meetings in Corry and maybe one day in separate residential treatment facilities for men and women.

His New Life Restoration Center, based at Abundant Grace Church in Corry, is one of several faith-based recovery initiatives in Erie County. Its inspiration is a successful Ohio program that state and local agencies work with to combat opioid dependence and death.

“The government actually reached out to them and said, ‘We can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem. What can churches do to help us fight this on the front lines?’” Morris said.

With Morris on the front lines are the Salvation Army and local churches, and the battle isn’t just in the city. In Erie County in 2017, victims of drug overdoses included residents of McKean, Girard, Springfield, Edinboro, North East, Waterford, Union City, Millcreek, Harborcreek and Cranesville.

“The problem is just as big in rural and suburban areas as it is in the cities,” said Jonathan Fehl, lead pastor at Corry First United Methodist Church. Fehl went to Corry in summer 2017 after serving congregations in Pittsburgh and Westmoreland County, where he buried people who died of drug overdoses.

Victims’ ages and circumstances vary as widely as their addresses.

“I’ve done funerals for young people in their early 20s, and for parents in their 40s. It’s pretty much throughout the spectrum,” Fehl said. “Some of them grew up in comfortable homes with family support and still managed to get sucked up into it. Some of them had struggled a long time, or been clean a certain amount of time but fell back into it for whatever reason.”

Addicts today are not the “down-and-outers” most people imagine, said Capt. Miriam Rader, of the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Erie. The center offers free, six-month residential recovery programs for male addicts from across northwestern Pennsylvania and from across the eastern United States. Local women with addiction problems are referred to one of 10 eastern district Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation programs for women.

“We’re seeing more educated, middle-class people and more young guys who are very well educated and very talented but have gotten themselves trapped on prescription pills and then mixed those things with drugs that can kill them,” Rader said.

Often, they’ve been in an accident and on painkillers until their prescription expires, Salvation Army intake counselor Curtis Lofton said.

“They buy the medication on the street and then realize that heroin is a little cheaper and gives them the same high,” Lofton said.

The 30 to 40 people housed at the local Salvation Army center in August 2017 were from all over Erie County and from as far away as Kentucky. Alternately, some local addicts choose to go to one of 25 other Eastern rehab centers for men.

“Sometimes people want to get away from their home environment and away from their dealers,” Lofton said.

The Salvation Army nationwide operates more free residential treatment programs than any other addiction rehabilitation service. The downtown Erie center can house as many as 50 men.

Salvation Army thrift store purchases fund programs. Addicts must get clean through a hospital or detox center program to qualify for Salvation Army work-based counseling and therapy. And though the therapy is also faith based, everyone is welcome.

“There needs to be a spiritual awakening to deal with something so huge as the opioid pandemic, and to give addicts a better chance of recovery,” Lofton said. “But we put it in God’s hands. We don’t refuse or judge people based on religion.”

While the majority of Adult Rehabilitation Center residents are recovering opioid addicts, the program also accepts alcoholics, homeless people and “people just having trouble with life,” he said.

Grace of Calvary Baptist Church, on Perry Highway in Millcreek Township, is one of 600 churches nationwide offering Reformers Unanimous, a faith-based program to help people beat similar issues, including opioid addiction. Participants from as far as Meadville and Chautauqua County meet weekly at the church and work through curriculum geared to specific addictions. The program continues two years.

“You don’t change 30 or 40 years of issues, sometimes, overnight. It takes time to unlearn behaviors and get on the right path,” program Director Dennis Sanbro said.

One of Sanbro’s assistants in the program was a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict.

The Salvation Army partners with such church-based programs, often sending clients to their support groups. “We can’t fight this on our own,” Rader said of the opioid crisis. “It takes a community, and a community of agencies and churches.”

Morris, of Corry’s New Life Restoration Center, is part of that community because of a family history of alcohol and drug addiction.

“I’ve seen the hurt and the poverty that come from that and refuse to let that be my family legacy anymore,” he said.