Low-cost substance abuse program closes, leaving few options
The Salvation Army center that provided a free six-month drug treatment program for Todd Meyer and Justin Misner closed Dec. 31, the victim of poor sales at the nonprofit’s Colorado Springs thrift stores.
That leaves one fewer no/low-cost residential treatment option in the area for those with substance abuse problems — a population that often lacks insurance or money to pay for treatment because their addictions have cost them their jobs.
“Colorado, in general, is a hard place to find viable, effective treatment for people without money,” said Michael McKelvey, chief executive of the nonprofit Peak Addiction Recovery Center, which has 16 inpatient beds and charges patients on a sliding scale. “We’re one of the last in the country for available funding dollars. You couple that with, say, what we do — inpatient treatment — and there are very, very few of us locally that do something like that.”
Peak Addiction and Cedar Springs Hospital, which has 12 beds for inpatient chemical dependency treatment, are the only two accredited inpatient treatment programs in Colorado Springs, McKelvey said. But Cedar Springs does not offer a sliding scale and requires patients to have insurance coverage, a spokesman said.
The Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center, which could accommodate 28 men, and the Springs Rescue Mission’s New Life Men’s Program, with room for 44 men, are considered different animals from Peak Addiction and Cedar Springs. Patient stays at Peak Addiction are generally 30 to 60 days, and about 30 days at Cedar Springs, according to their Web sites. At the Salvation Army center, men stayed for six months; at Springs Rescue the stay is 12 to 18 months.
“They’re not an accredited level of care, but they are residential and last longer, and are great,” McKelvey said.
Rich Palmer, men’s ministry programs manager for Springs Rescue Mission, calls the SRM/Salvation Army approach the “spiritual regeneration model.”
“They’re more spiritually focused; the medical program isn’t,” said Palmer, who ran the Salvation Army center in Colorado Springs for about seven years before starting the Springs Rescue job in January.
There are outpatient options for people with low or no income, including the intensive Adult Substance Abuse Programs through Pikes Peak Mental Health. Cheryl Stine, program manager for PPMH, believes that outpatient treatment can be effective.
“Across the industry, there’s a sense that living substance-free right where you live is more effective than disengaging,” said Stine, a certified addictions counselor.
But she acknowledged that Colorado Springs could use more inpatient options for the indigent, and called the closure of the local Salvation Army center a “loss to the community.”
The Salvation Army still has its coed Adult Rehabilitation Center in Denver. But the men-only center in Colorado Springs was the only option for Misner and Meyer, because of their domestic violence record.
“I feel that program saved my life,” Misner said. “It played a big part in getting my children back.”
Read the story of two dads' fight to get clean and win back their children.
