The first recovery high school in Maine for youths battling opioid addictions is opening this August. The project is something no rural community has attempted in decades, as officials hope to lower the rising number of accidental fatal overdoses afflicting young people even as overall addiction rates decrease.

Maine boasts a wide breadth of substance use disorder treatment programs, including inpatient and outpatient care. The Pine Tree State also features grassroots efforts like Narcotics Anonymous to bolster community efforts. Many locals are determined to prevent their loved ones and neighbors from falling through the cracks.

Unfortunately, not everyone makes it. Michael Robertson’s story is one that families across the country know too well. At 13, he was prescribed Vicodin after dental work and quickly began misusing it. By his junior year of high school, he was addicted and never found his way back. Robertson died of a drug overdose in 2023. He was just 22 years old. 

This August, his hometown of Fort Kent is launching the Upper St. John Valley Recovery High School. It’s the state’s first recovery high school and one of the few nationwide operating in a rural area. The school is funded in part by opioid settlement money and built specifically to keep teens battling narcotic addiction in the classroom while they get sober.

Teen Overdoses Rise Even as Drug Use Falls

The data presents a grim paradox. Nationally, fewer young people use substances like cigarettes, alcohol and harder drugs. However, overdoses among kids and teens continue to spike.

The reason is fentanyl. The synthetic opioid is now present in virtually every illicit drug supply, meaning a teenager experimenting once with a pill or powder faces a potentially fatal dose. A young person who might have survived opioid abuse in prior decades may not survive it today.

Substance use particularly harms young people because their brains are still rapidly maturing. Drugs disrupt that growth by impeding normal brain communication, increasing anxiety while decreasing attention span and problem-solving ability.

Harvard Medical School pediatrics professor Dr. Sharon Levy put it plainly: “Substance use knocks systems out of balance.” 

A New Kind of Recovery School

Maine has received millions of dollars from nationwide settlement agreements with pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis. Fort Kent educators applied to the statewide council distributing those funds and received $616,000 to build a recovery school model.

The Upper St. John Valley Recovery High School will soon join the Fort Kent school district as Maine’s first recovery high school and the only one currently operating in a rural setting. It has capacity for 14 students at a time, eight of whom will board on the University of Maine at Fort Kent campus during the school week. 

Recovery high schools require students to be in active recovery and at least 30 days sober before enrolling. If students relapse, which staff consider an expected part of recovery, the school will work with them to build stronger coping strategies rather than remove them from the program. 

Social worker Tammy Lothrop has worked in Aroostook County for 25+ years. She framed the stakes directly: ” When we separate the two, students fall behind academically, fall behind their peers, which leads to more shame.” She added that now, “we’re not asking students to choose between recovery and education.”

Rural Communities Face the Worst Opioid Addiction Gaps

Rural areas bear a disproportionate burden of the opioid epidemic with the fewest resources to fight it. Maine has few inpatient facilities specifically dedicated to youths with substance addictions. In Aroostook County, preventive programs for young people are also few and far between.

That resource gap often forces families to make an impossible choice. Students who need treatment frequently have to leave their homes and parents, and sometimes the state entirely, which magnifies trauma and isolation.

Teacher Brooke Nadeau co-developed the recovery school after researching youth opioid treatment options in the region. By stopping “the cycle at a younger age,” she said, they “can go to college and become functioning adults.”

 Recovery Schools Show Real Results

There are currently 46 recovery high schools operating across the country, serving youth with substance use disorders and co-occurring conditions and warning signs like depression and anxiety. Students in recovery who attend these schools have greater odds of abstaining from drug use than their peers at standard schools.

The Fort Kent model faces real challenges, primarily stigma in a small, tight-knit community like Fort Kent. Many teenagers are reluctant to identify themselves as having substance abuse problems, even if they show signs of an addiction. The school currently has just one confirmed interested student, though caseworkers who work with young people and know what to look out for have begun referring candidates.

The program has a two-year funding window and needs to fill its 14 slots to secure additional state legislative funding for a five-year pilot.

Understanding Opioid Addiction in Teens

Opioid addiction occurs when repeated use of opioids, including prescription painkillers like oxycodone and Vicodin, heroin, or illicit fentanyl, causes physical and psychological dependence. 

Naloxone (Narcan) is a fast-acting overdose reversal medication and can save a life if administered quickly. But prevention and long-term treatment require far more than a single antidote.

Here’s where many peer support programs kick in. Groups like Narcotics Anonymous offer free meetings where locals gather and share experiences and lean on each other. NA groups exist all over the country, including rural locations. Feel free to look through our directory or call 800-934-1582(Sponsored) to take the first step to a healthier you.

Tina and Melinda are both addicted to opioids. Both of these women are paying for suboxone treatment for their opioid use disorder.

Tina has private insurance. Melinda has Medicaid coverage.

Which of these two women is more likely to get an appointment? Will providers discriminate when it comes to the method for paying for suboxone treatment?

That’s what researchers wanted to find out. So, they used “secret shoppers” to get answers.

Investigators from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, RAND Corporation, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Departments of Pediatrics and Health Policy collaborated on the study.

Here’s what they discovered.

It’s Hard for Anyone to Get an Appointment

Researchers made 3,420 simulated patient calls for the study. The callers identified themselves as women with Medicaid coverage or private insurance coverage. All were requesting appointments with buprenorphine providers.

Guess how many successfully landed an insurance-covered appointment? Less than half. Even with Medicaid or private insurance.

Only 45 percent of women with private insurance coverage were able to get an appointment. And just 38 percent of women with Medicaid insurance were as well.

According to the study’s lead author Michael Richards, MD, PhD, MPH, and associate professor at Baylor University in Waco:

The most striking finding is — for both callers that had private insurance and callers that had Medicaid — just how infrequently they’re able to actually leverage those insurance benefits when it comes to getting an appointment for opioid use disorder. That really speaks to the many serious and substantive access hurdles these individuals have to clear.

It’s Harder for Medicaid Patients…in Certain Areas

Previous research has shown significant differences in access to opioid use disorder treatment between patients with Medicaid versus private insurance. And this study was no different.

However, researchers discovered that these results varied based on one key factor.

But, as the percentage of Medicaid coverage in the local community went up, so did the number of Medicaid patients getting appointments.

In areas where Medicaid coverage was prevalent enough, the difference in access to care was insignificant.

Causes of Discrimination in Paying for Suboxone Treatment 

Investigators can’t say for sure what is causing this disparity. They suspect it might be as simple as paperwork issues.

According to the study findings, providers in areas with a higher rate of Medicaid coverage may be more familiar with business processes needed to obtain payment from Medicaid for buprenorphine treatment.

But the problem is most likely multifaceted, they admit.

Whatever the issues are, researchers suggest that these findings guide future efforts. They advise, “Efforts to improve access to treatment may be best targeted to areas where Medicaid prevalence is lower.”

MAT Numbers Remain Low

In 2020, nearly 70,000 people in the United States died from opioid overdoses. Currently, buprenorphine is one of three medication-assisted treatments (MAT) approved by the World Health Organization and the FDA to treat opioid use disorder. This medication can help diminish withdrawal symptoms and cravings.

This, in turn, lowers the potential for opioid misuse.

The number of clinicians who can prescribe buprenorphine has increased 300 percent. But less than 33 percent of individuals with opioid use disorder receive any kind of MAT. Researchers hope their efforts can make a change in these numbers.

“Making it through the structural barriers to just getting into treatment for opioid use disorder is extraordinarily hard, even if you’re the most motivated person on the planet,” says study principal investigator Stephen Patrick, MD, MPH. He’s from the department of health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We are seeing record-setting rates of overdose death, and for every overdose death, there are a slew of other hospitalizations and additional family members affected. I hope our continued research garners the attention of the public and policymakers and more clearly communicates that we must put solutions in place to break down these barriers.”

Call 800-934-1582(Sponsored) now to learn more about the available treatment options in your area.

 

 

 

“When will things ever get easier,” Samantha wondered aloud. Thanks to this pandemic, she couldn’t interact with anyone for four more weeks! That’s an eternity. Samantha knows if she doesn’t have support for a single day, it feels like she’s on the verge of kissing her six weeks of sobriety goodbye. “Guess it’s time to see what these virtual NA meetings are all about.” 

Whether it’s due to quarantine, car trouble, or childcare issues, many people find it hard to attend in-person Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings – but they need them.

For all the downsides of the Covid-19 pandemic, one bright spot has been the upsurge in online resources. Now, it’s pretty darn simple to attend an NA meeting without even leaving your house. And just like in-person meetings, these virtual meetings offer crucial support and encouragement to stay clean and sober.

How Virtual Support Groups Work

Here’s a look at how these online 12-Step meetings offer help:

• Learn how to cope: Get insights from others who have been where you are. There ARE healthy ways to deal with your emotions and stress. But they aren’t always intuitive. You have to learn the best strategies to use. Learn about them by attending a virtual meeting.
• Fight urges: How can you deal with triggers? What’s the best way to fight urges when they hit you out of nowhere? Virtual NA meetings can help you learn how to deal with these challenges. You’ll learn new insights and pick up new skills that will help you overcome even the strongest urges.
• Stay motivated: We all need encouragement. And we could use fresh ideas to stay motivated. With virtual NA meetings, you can learn new ways to keep yourself on the right track and receive encouragement from others to help you stay there. It’s good to have cheerleaders in your corner, and virtual NA meetings can help you find this support, no matter where you are physically.
• Get plugged in: You don’t have to do this alone. And you shouldn’t try to. Virtual NA meetings give you access to a strong recovery network. They plug you into resources and support that will help you maintain sobriety and allow you to thrive in the clean-and-sober life. Virtual meetings remove many challenges and barriers so you can reach out and get the help you need.

The Convenience of Virtual 12-Step Meetings

And what may be the biggest help of all? You can get all the support you need from anywhere in the world – as long as you have an Internet connection.

Virtual NA meetings offer all the above benefits of in-person meetings, but offer additional advantages.

• They work with tight schedules: No drive-time needed. Plug into a virtual NA meeting between other responsibilities of work and home. And with meetings across the nation, it’s easy to find one at all different times of day.
• They don’t require transportation: Don’t have a car? Unable to drive? Don’t want to get out during bad weather? No problem. Attend a virtual NA meeting from home.
• They don’t require childcare: Access support without finding a babysitter. You can be at home with your kids and get the help you need, with virtual NA meetings.
• They don’t require masks: Virtual meetings are perfect for those who need to follow COVID-related restrictions. Remain a safe distance while connecting when you need support most.
• They are available everywhere: Whether you’re traveling or are living in a rural area with limited in-person options, virtual NA meetings are a great way to get support anywhere in the world. Simply plug in on your favorite device and find a meeting to attend online.

Find a Virtual NA Meeting Near You

Not a tech guru? No worries. All you need is a phone, computer, or tablet to access a virtual NA meeting. Most virtual NA meetings use Zoom, Skype, or other simple video-based programs to run the meetings. These systems are easy to install on your device, and they walk you through everything step by step – so you can access virtual NA meetings in no time.

Plus, Narcotics Anonymous has a helpful directory and an easy-to-use app to help you find and attend a virtual meeting. (Android users get the app here.) You can even start your own virtual NA meeting. Here’s the scoop on how to go about doing that.

The organization has also set up a help page to provide more virtual meeting resources. With these convenient online options, it’s never been easier to get the support you need.

For information about treatment options for you or a loved one, call 800-934-1582(Sponsored) today.

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