In the two years and seven months Jaimee Moffitt has been sober, her memory or the hopelessness and fear that marked her time as an addict has never faded.
It's something she has to remember to keep her going; Moffitt, a Charleston native and substance abuse counselor who abused drugs and alcohol regularly from the time she was 12 years old, remembers how it felt to be an addict so that she can help pull others from the same despair.
"Sometimes all you need is a moment of clarity and a phone number to call," she said. "As strange as it sounds, my past is my greatest asset - it's what I have to base everything on, because when you're in active addiction, you feel like you're the only one who feels this way, and you feel like there's no way out. I'm here to show people, not just tell them something I read in a book in college - I can tell you, because I've been there and I know how you feel. There's a better life."
Moffitt is one of the counselors waiting on the other end of the phone at 844-HELP4WV, the first statewide 24-hour substance abuse and mental health call line. The new call line, announced at a press conference Wednesday by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's office, is a collaborative effort between First Choice Health Systems, a West Virginia-based company that runs programs like the 1-800-GAMBLER help line, and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.
The help line, funded by a $550,000 annual grant from the West Virginia Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities, will offer substance abuse and mental health treatment referrals, appointment reminders, directions to treatment facilities and transportation assistance, as well as follow-up calls after the first treatment appointment, the first month and the first three months of treatment. The help line has hired 14 new employees to staff the program, according to First Choice president and CEO Steve Burton, and will have medical personnel on site at all times and the ability to dispatch local law enforcement officers to perform safety checks.
According to Burton, it's impossible to tell whether the help line will be inundated with calls after word gets out, but he said First Choice is prepared to meet the needs of the state.
"That's the beauty of a new project - you're going along, and you're not exactly sure how many calls you're going to receive, so it's going to be a growing and learning experience for us, but we think that having the help line there is integral to getting folks," he said. "Having someone there to answer their call so we can get them into treatment is very important."
West Virginia's substance abuse problem is striking - West Virginia has the highest rate of overdose deaths in the U.S., according to the nonprofit groups Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. There were about 34 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 West Virginia residents from 2011-13, up dramatically from 22 deaths per 100,000 people in 2007-09 - more than double the national average of 13.4 deaths per 100,000 people.
"There are very few people who I'm looking at, who are looking at me - who are all around me - who haven't been touched, remotely or directly, by this issue," said Charleston Mayor Danny Jones. "Maybe there is no one in this room who hasn't been touched, even remotely - friend, family - a person you're connected to, a person who affects your life. I know I have been directly affected by it, and it is good that our country is trying to turn attention to it, because we're not going to be able to arrest our way out of it."
Jones' son, Zachary Jones, was sentenced by Kanawha Circuit Court Judge Duke Bloom to spend five years on strict probation in April on fraud charges after Zachary Jones tried to buy $1,600 worth of gift cards from the Charleston Town Center mall with a stolen credit card in December, planning to exchange them for drugs. In March of 2014, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's brother pleaded guilty in federal court to distributing the prescription painkiller oxymorphone and was sentenced to house arrest.
"I'm confident that by working together, we can offer those struggling with addiction the opportunity to seek help, overcome their addiction, and return to their families, their communities and their workplaces," Tomblin said. "We're working hard to improve community-based treatment options and recovery services through a number of partnerships representing people and agencies at the local, state and federal level."
Tomblin pointed to the more than 120 inpatient and outpatient treatment centers, crisis stabilization units, DUI treatment programs and substance abuse prevention centers in the state, and noted that many had sprung up in the last two to three years in response to West Virginia's growing need for treatment services.
"It's very important that when a person makes the decision 'I've got to have help,' they have somebody on this end of the line who can get them with the right professional who can hopefully save their life and get them the help they need," Tomblin said.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.