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Trumbull officials hope Vivitrol can help inmates kick drug addiction
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A Trumbull County judge, Sheriff Thomas Altiere and the county Mental Health and Recovery Board are hoping the drug Vivitrol will help some drug addicts beat their addiction.
Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull Common Pleas Court said he learned about the drug from a judge in Lake County, who said it’s been used with a success rate of 75 percent there.
“Compared to our success rate, that’s astronomical,” Judge McKay said recently. “The early results are very good. We don’t know about the long-term results.”
Vivitrol blocks the effects of opioid medication, including pain relief or feelings of well-being that can lead to opioid abuse, according to the drugs.com web site. Vivitrol, also known as Naltrexone, “can help keep you from feeling a ‘need’ to use the opioid,” it says.
It is not to be used if the person has used any opioid medicine within the past 10 days, as it could cause sudden and severe withdrawal symptoms, the site says.
Judge McKay and Altiere decided recently to participate in a trial run of the drug with a male inmate who has a pending case before the judge.
The inmate had been in the jail 70 days, and a family member was willing to pay $1,200 for the first monthly injection. The program typically takes 12 months.
“I decided to take a chance,” Judge McKay said. The judge could have sent the man to prison for a probation violation.
“It’s not a magic bullet,” Judge McKay said. “You have to want to get off of it,” he said of heroin and other opiates. “Rather than go to prison and do nothing, I’m seeing if there’s another chance.”
Judge McKay has asked Keith Evans, director of the county Adult Probation Department, to look at whether the drug can be used on a wider basis.
Altiere said his part in the trial run is providing the nurse for the inmate’s first injection and followup injections if they become necessary. The inmate took the first dose in the jail about a month ago.
April Caraway, executive director of the county Mental Health and Recovery Board, said one challenge with using the drug is its cost and the rule preventing a jail inmate from using Medicaid to pay for the treatment. But officials are hoping to secure a grant as some other counties have done.
In Toledo, Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp, other officials and the nonprofit behavioral health organization A Renewed Mind have been using two $100,000 grants from the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to create a program called Project Direct Link that uses Vivitrol.
Matt Rizzo, CEO and president of A Renewed Mind, said 70 to 75 percent of the 38 former inmates in the program since it began have stayed in the program, which lasts six to nine months.
Some of them have had relapses but returned to the program, he said.
That success rate compares with about 20 percent of people who take the “white-knuckle” approach and don’t use medicine-assisted treatment with drugs, Rizzo said.
People who use Vivitrol or another commonly used treatment drug, Suboxone, outside of the jail program can have a success rate of about 60 percent if used as part of a comprehensive treatment program, he said.
Rizzo thinks the success rate is higher with inmates because they have legal challenges hanging over their head, increasing their motivation to succeed.
Before an inmate can be part of the program, he or she must be screened. Candidates must be be motivated, Medicaid eligible and must not have a persistent mental illness. They must have had no opiates in their system for five to seven days before the drug is administered.
One plus for Vivitrol is that it is not a synthetic opiate like Suboxone, and some people will refuse to take another opiate to get off of another one, he noted. Another plus is that a person who tries to use an opiate while on Vivitrol will find that Vivitrol prevents an opiate such as heroin from affecting them, Rizzo said.