Portsmouth recovery group seeks funding to extend its mission

PORTSMOUTH — A group formed in 2019 to address “what was clearly becoming a crisis in dealing with” opioid addiction, is now pushing for Greater Portsmouth to become a “recovery ready community.”

Larry McCullough, the executive director of Pine Tree Institute, said Portsmouth Coordinated Response to Substance Use Disorder (PCR/SUD) was formed in May 2019, and jointly funded by the Portsmouth City Council and Portsmouth Rotary.

The Pinetree Institute is a nonprofit “facilitating a number of approaches to solving one key issue: the long-term effects of trauma on individuals, and the communities in which they live,” according to its website.

The mission of PCR/SUD, McCullough said, was “to explore what the city could do in a coordinated effort to address” the opioid addiction crisis, which has spread to now include “other drugs like fentanyl and  methamphetamines.”

“In that early work it became clear that having all the services of the community work together to address this issue was going to be essential if we’re going to get any kind of traction on it,” he told the City Council during a recent presentation on the new initiative.

The proposed Greater Portsmouth Recovery Ready Community Coalition will “look at the full range of services required from prevention to harm reduction to treatment to long-term recovery support,” he said.

Recovery requires more than initial treatment

McCullough acknowledged that “one of the things we know is that treatment generally is not enough.”“There needs to be ongoing support in the community if people are really going to be able to pursue their recovery and reintegrate in an effective way,” he said. “It's sort of falling off a cliff coming out of treatment if there are no services in the community to provide that kind of support.”

“Becoming a recovery ready community looks across that whole spectrum of services and also engages all members of the coalition,” he added.

Creating the Recovery Ready Community Coalition came out of discussions that members of the PCR/SUD had this summer, McCullough said.

Coalition members decided they needed to keep doing what they already started, in addition to addressing other issues, he said.

Those include looking at ways to “more closely” measure outcomes, he said.

Plus, they “need to address mental health issues” that are co-occurring with substance use disorders.

“At least 50 percent of the people in recovery have co-occurring disorders,” McCullough said.

The Greater Portsmouth Recovery Ready Community Coalition also wants to “look for services for the homeless population,” he said, a need that was “very clearly articulated by Cross Roads House.”

“We specially wanted to address youth and prevention,” McCullough added.

Expanding the group’s mission

During a recent interview, McCullough explained that the Recovery Ready Coalition is “an extension and expansion of the same group” of members who make up the PCR/SUD.

When the initial group was formed, a variety of stakeholders involved in addressing substance misuse joined the initiative, including representatives of the police and fire departments, Portsmouth Hospital and city officials, he said.

“All the original players have recommitted. Cross Roads is now a member of the coalition, as is the city manager (Karen Conard) and the mayor (Deaglan McEachern),” he said “It’s a continuation and maybe a refinement of our mission.”

Fentanyl making street drugs more deadly

McCullough noted too that the danger of drug misuse have been exacerbated by the fact that many illicit drugs are “being laced with fentanyl.”

“And it’s becoming quite deadly,” he added.

“People are no longer talking about drug overdoses, they’re talking about drug poisonings,” McCullough said. “People can die the first time they use a drug because the drug is so strong or it’s laced with fentanyl.”

He stressed that the illicit drugs that are now being misused on the streets represent a “whole new class of substances that are cheap, easy to get and can be incredibly deadly.”

24 recovery beds created in Rockingham County

In terms of accomplishments, he believes PCR/SUD’s biggest one is helping to establish two recovery homes in Rockingham County with a total of 24 beds.

“When we started in 2019 there were no recovery homes in Rockingham County, but there were a little over 80 people that year who qualified to be in recovery homes but had to be sent out of the county to other places,” McCullough said.

“If someone in recovery does not have a stable place to live, it’s very difficult to get anything else beyond that,” he said.

There is now the Summerwood House in Hampton, a 12-bed recovery home for men, and the Magnolia House, a 12-bed recovery home for women in Hampton, he said.

“One was already in process, but the coalition played a big role in getting the second one established, he said.

Such facilities, he said, are crucial for people in recovery who have just finished their 30 or 60 days of treatment.

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“Typically what happens is people are discharged from treatment and sent back out into the community, that’s why this transitional housing is so important to long-term success,” he said.

During the pandemic, the group, working with T-Mobile, also “got access to free phones for about 100 people who had no treatment access then, he said.

In order to get the new coalition up and running, they are seeking multi-year funding in the amount of $120,000 a year for two years.

“One of the challenges as you know going year to year is you’re never exactly sure if we’re going to be able to build,” he said. “We have learned if we put support into this we can achieve some results.”

They are asking the council to agree to provide some of the monies for the coalition, and Conard was expected to report back to the council Monday on where that could come from.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth NH recovery group seeks public funds to extend its mission