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Recovery in the News
People in recovery urge lawmakers to undo governor’s cut
Mike Sparo
The Journal News
February 3, 2010
Friends of Recovery, a new coalition of people in recovery from addiction, their families and allies, held its first lobby day at the Capitol this week. Members urged lawmakers to restore $1.5 million to the state budget for the ongoing Recovery Community Center Initiative. Gov. David Paterson has proposed scaling back $2.7 million that was originally planned for recovery services by 2011 to $500,000, which would only be enough to support three or four centers.
The lobby day marked the end of a “long era of anonymity while decisions have been made without us,” said Chacku Mathai, treasurer of Friends of Recovery—FOR-NY—and deputy director of the state Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centers. Mathai, who grew up in the Rochester area, is in recovery from addiction.
FOR-NY members believe the state needs more recovery-oriented care, a different model than the traditional crisis-oriented acute care. Recovery community centers provide support groups, housing and employment assistance, and other services. There are no limits on care, which is how the acute-care system works, and they provide a safety net that acute-care facilities cannot, members said.
Although the state continues to face fiscal problems, this is not the time to cut recovery services, Mathai said. The state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services estimates that about 2.5 million New Yorkers have a substance-abuse problem or gambling addiction.
Jackson Davis, project director of the Recovery Network of New York in Syracuse, said the network has recovery centers in Syracuse and Rochester. The group, whose umbrella organization is the Center for Community Alternatives, recently had to close down a center in Albany due to lack of funds. The recovery-center model embraces people’s differences, he said. For example, it can take years for something to connect for someone and lead them toward recovery.
“What’s so unique about recovery centers is they understand there are many pathways for recovery,” said Davis, who has been clean for 19 years.
The centers were originally told they would be getting state money in October 2009, Davis said. That got pushed back to December, and now it may not happen until the end of this year. Meanwhile, each site serves between 400 and 500 people a year, he said.
Tempest Saldivar of Syracuse volunteers at the recovery center in her city by helping new members and teaching computer skills, and she has gone back to college. “It helps me stay clean. I go to two meetings a day there—10 a.m. and 2 p.m.,” she said.
Delane Riley said she was in a rehabilitation center in Syracuse in 2005 and was kicked out of the program for a rules violation. Someone introduced her to the Recovery Network. Having turned her life around, she is now an outreach specialist for the Syracuse center. She can identify with people who are seeking help with recovery because she has been there herself, she said.
“When I see a person come through that door, their story is probably my story,” she said