Some seeking treatment for drug use say they face long waitlists, paperwork

People who experienced substance use disorders and their families say the road to recovery was paved with 'bureaucratic hoops' and waitlists of up to three months to access certain treatment programs.

Kirkland Lake resident Megan Cameron is in recovery and says it's been hard to co-ordinate the help needed for her former partner who is currently struggling with severe and chronic drug use. 

She says calls for help have often been transferred from one agency to another as they looked for withdrawal management support, detox, assessments and treatment. 

"Each resource is like: 'Oh, we don't do that'," she said. 

She says they are now working to get him into treatment, but the northeastern Ontario programs they've called have waitlists ranging from three to 10 weeks and a list of criteria that needs to be met to be admitted into the program.

"It's so frustrating … It takes a lot of one to say 'I'm done, I want the help now."

"If there isn't any help right then and there, it's back to the streets," she said, adding that it'll be yet another long process to get back to the point of no longer wanting to use drugs. 

Families describe fleeting windows of opportunity

Cameron says she worries about her former partner not making it to the intake date.

"I have two children with him… It's a worry for all of us, we wake up every day and hunt him down because he doesn't have a phone, or stability," she said. 

"Is he alive today? Did he overdose?" 

She also worries that there could be changes to his health or his willingness to be sober in the next few weeks that would make him no longer admissible for treatment.

Elsewhere in the north, Greater Sudbury resident Jessica Fell says her son had been struggling with drug use for some time before he finally opened up to the idea of getting help. 

She says the family seized on the opportunity and drove straight to a local clinic to get the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) assessment needed for admission into most treatment programs.

That's when they learned there was a two week wait time to receive a GAIN.

"When you have somebody who's willing to get help, like 2 weeks is a long time to wait," she said. "Plus the assessment doesn't mean you get into treatment right away." 

Fell says by the time the appointment came around, her son was no longer willing to go to the clinic. 

"We lost an opportunity there," she said.

A "very very lengthy" assessment tool 

Fell says shortly after that, her son became severely mentally ill and was hospitalized several times. The care he received for that mental health problem eventually enabled him to achieve sobriety.

"I believe had he not gotten sick, he would still be fighting for help with addictions and I don't believe we would have got to where we are," said Fell.

Monarch Recovery Services is a non-profit organization in Sudbury that offers a range of addictions supports and services.

Its CEO, Roxane Zuck, says the GAIN assessment is slowly being put out of use by the province because it's a "very, very lengthy process" that doesn't "answer all the questions agencies have." 

She says one of the big reasons for the wait for a GAIN assessment is that there are fewer and fewer people trained to do it.

Zuck says the province is currently developing a new tool that will hopefully speed up that part of the process but it has yet to be implemented.

Currently, Monarch Residential Services has an average wait time of 16 days for men's residential treatment programs, and 92 days for women's.

Zuck hopes those numbers will improve as the non-profit moves toward ongoing admissions instead of taking in one cohort at a time.

Meeting the criteria for treatment

Other treatment programs in the province's northeast say they have an average wait time of about three weeks, and say sometimes people stay on waitlists because they are missing required assessments and appointments.

Sam Gilchrist, CEO of land-based treatment program Gwekwaadziwin Miikan on Manitoulin Island, says people can move up or down the waitlist depending on their circumstances. 

"Sometimes they are on the waitlist and we might not hear from them for a little while, they may be active in substance use," he said. 

Gilchrist says there are currently three cohorts of 20 people per year for the three-month long treatment program, and about 150 people on the waitlist at any given time.

"Our waitlists far outweigh our resources available," he said. "I think that's a common thread throughout a lot of programs."

Seeking help outside of Ontario 

Wes Boisclair grew up in the Sudbury-area community of Coniston, and began drinking as a teenager with friends during hunting or fishing trips. 

"Some guys would be able to party for a day and then go on doing their regular life. But not for me," he said. "I would party for days on end, not thinking I had a problem." 

He says his initial problems with alcohol and cannabis, combined with a medical prescription for oxytontin for shoulder pain, eventually evolved into the use of cocaine, crack cocaine, and heroin. 

"It was almost impossible to find anywhere to help with my situation," he said. "Jumping through hoops to even get looked at for treatment was hard." 

After two months of assessment and waiting, he was finally admitted into a 21 day treatment program in North Bay. 

He says the program wasn't long enough to help him on his recovery journey. 

He says on his way out of the program, he stopped at the liquor store and picked up a six pack for the two hour drive back to Sudbury. 

Eventually, a friend of his offered to help pay for treatment in British Columbia, and he ended up staying in the program there for a year and half. 

Now he's now put down roots there and doesn't intend to move back to his home town. He describes how heartbreaking it's been to drive through Sudbury when he visits and see people he used to know struggle with drug use. 

"I was lucky I had really good people in my life willing to help pay for [treatment]," he said.