Recovering from addiction
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Patrick Kruis' 15-year struggle with substance abuse started at age 12 when he ingested caffeine pills at a skating rink in Florida. When he was in his 20s, Kruis was first introduced to heroin.
It wasn't until age 27 that Kruis, now a 30-year-old Bedford County resident and lead technician at Pyramid Healthcare, began his recovery process.
"They say the disease was prevalent way before the drug was," Kruis said. "I noticed through working steps that my disease was present way before I even picked up my first drug. But I used drugs and chemicals to suppress these feelings. After I found out what alcohol did, what pain pills did, what marijuana did, after I figured all that out, it was an escape route for me to get away from the feelings that I was feeling as a young man."
Kruis partially attributes his substance abuse to a childhood experience he wasn't comfortable sharing on a group level.
"I used, and I used to cover up these feelings, to try to feel normal or not to feel at all. It started off fun. The literature talks about how it progresses -- jails, institutions and death. And the only thing, thank God, I didn't get to was death," Kruis said.
On Jan. 10, Gov. Tom Wolf declared a statewide disaster for the opioid epidemic to enhance the state's response against heroin and opioid addiction. On March 14, Wolf unveiled an opioid data dashboard to provide Pennsylvanians battling the opioid crisis a way to help find resources locally. The dashboard provides data for areas of prevention, rescue and treatment and data at the county level.
On March 19, President Donald Trump proposed funding commercials to deter drug use as the "least expensive" scare tactic to make people fearful of "ending up like the people in the commercials."
Pennsylvania in top five
The CDC ranks Pennsylvania in the top five states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose in 2016 with an estimated rate of 37 people per 100,000 population. The other states are West Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire and Kentucky.
Judy Rosser, executive director of Blair Drug and Alcohol Partnerships, said, "We're in that beltline of states that are the highest in the nation. So why that is? It may be in relation to how opioids have been prescribed within our communities. We know that the prescription drug issue is the driver initially for this. … As far as locally, we're one and two in prescribing and distributing prescription drugs in the state."
To combat the opioid epidemic, the Blair Drug and Alcohol Partnerships is collaborating with local hospitals including Empower3 Center for Health. The health center, founded by Zane Gates, takes a preventative, integrative approach to address substance abuse including a five-year screening, intervention and treatment initiative started in March 2017.
"The primary care setting is where you should start," Gates said. "The primary care office is the frontline, and that's where we catch a lot of this stuff."
"People who have substance abuse problems don't understand that they have a medical problem," Gates said. "Lots of people drink and never become alcoholics. There's people that try drugs and never become an addict. But people who become it are built to be that. It's not a choice. I think the only thing you choose is not to get help for it. That's the only fault."
Through the program, every patient who visits the clinic can opt to go through mental health and substance abuse screening.
"Primary care, I think, is ground zero for the prescription opiate epidemic -- those include primary care clinics, the emergency rooms, any kind of primary access to the health care system," said Vincent Capone, a physician assistant at Empower3.
"When you have a less than integrative approach and you're only addressing someone's pain, it is expedient to prescribe an opiate and then they go on their way," Capone added. "It's much more difficult from a resource perspective -- time and staff and outreach -- to address things like pain or anxiety in a more robust way that doesn't lead to overprescription or unmonitored long-term use of meds that weren't meant to be used long term."
So far, Empower3 has completed about 5,000 screenings, 313 brief interventions and more than 101 referrals.
More resources needed
Despite additional resources and funding because of the opioid crisis, Rosser said there are still not enough community resources to combat substance abuse. "We are battling a lot of multimillion dollar industries that are promoting substance use and we don't have those kinds of resources," she said.
"So we have to look at what are the roots-on-the-ground folks we can partner with to help expand capacity of this. It's kind of a hub and spoke model," she said. "We look at how we can expand capacity of other folks working on this issue."
The Blair Drug and Alcohol Partnerships recently started an initiative called Faith Partners as a way to expand its resource network and to engage the faith community in prevention, intervention and recovery.
The organization also provides testing and training for certified recovery specialists, intensive case management and various support groups and is looking to host a 12-week education program on recovery based off a family resource curriculum in May.
Rosser said, "A lot of times folks don't know what path this person has been involved with, whether there was trauma involved in their life, whether addiction is part of their family system or there are untreated mental health issues."
James Adams, a 38-year-old Altoona resident in recovery, said he turned to drugs because of the depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder he had as a kid.
But with the help of his sponsor, his support group, a 12-step program for drug rehabilitation and the Pyramid Healthcare Gratitude halfway house, Adams has been clean since Feb. 17, 2017. He now works at a local pizza shop that he asked not to be named.
"I realize my mental health turned me into an addict. I also thought I needed drugs because something was missing," Adams said. "I threw away 25 years of my life to an addiction."
"Recovery to me isn't just to stop the use of drugs. Recovery is an inside job of why you even picked up the drugs in the first place," Adams said. "If you always have faith, trust, compassion, empathy, these are just certain feelings you never even have while you're in addiction. If you can get spiritual principles in play in your life, there should be no reason you ever have to use again."
Moving forward
Both of Kruis' parents struggled with substance abuse. Kruis said his mother was a "big enabler," putting alcohol in his school locker and showing up to his school football games half drunk. Growing up, Kruis played different sports from a young age, including football, baseball, basketball and inline skating.
"I never thought I was going to be an addict. I wanted to be a baseball player, basketball player or football player. I didn't grow up and say: 'Listen, I want to be an addict. I want to be this person.' It happened, and I'm grateful it happened," Kruis said.
It wasn't until July 2015 during his travels to Pennsylvania when Kruis was evaluated at a Centre County health facility and referred to Cove Forge, a substance abuse treatment center in Williamsburg. He stayed at the center for 57 days until moving to the Gratitude halfway house in Altoona on Aug. 27, 2015, where he resided for about 90 days.
While at the halfway house, Kruis worked for a couple of months at one restaurant before working at another restaurant for about nine months.
In September 2016, Kruis started working at Pyramid Healthcare. He is now a certified recovery specialist and manages staff who help residents in recovery from substance abuse and mental health issues.
"I'm grateful for my experience. My experience is the most valuable thing I have in recovery," Kruis said. "That experience might be able to help or save somebody one day. And if my higher power who I chose to call God led me all this way to help one person, I'm OK with it."
Kruis got married in October to a woman named Carolina, who he met at a restaurant job and who is now pregnant with their child. He also has a 2-year-old son named Kayson, whose mother is currently incarcerated at a prison in Florida.
"I don't have to resort to those old behaviors. I don't have to go back to using. I don't obsess about using drugs anymore," Kruis said. "Now, it's more about my behaviors and how I can condition my spirit and my well-being to being a better man, a better husband, a better co-worker or a better peer -- just a better member of society, a productive member of society."
Mirror Staff Writer Shen Wu Tan is at 946-7457.