Simi Hospital Ends Sessions for Addicts

Recovering substance abusers made it through the holidays without their group therapy sessions at Simi Valley Hospital but now they wonder if the sessions for which they paid will ever resume.

The hospital charged as much as $17,000 for its drug treatment program, which included a one-year series of group therapy sessions three times weekly. The groups provided help for more than 100 people struggling to avoid relapse, members said.

But when they showed up for a weekly meeting in mid-November, members were told by front-desk workers that the program had been terminated.

They were given no warning and no provisions were made for alternate care. They said attempts to contact hospital officials by phone and mail have been unsuccessful.

“They promised continued care. That’s why I took the program,” said Alisa, a recovering addict who asked that her last name be withheld.

Alisa had recently graduated from the hospital’s intensive eight-week outpatient program and had started attending meetings only two weeks before they were canceled. Hospital administrators, who acknowledged that their patients are due one full year of the service, said it was halted only temporarily, because of remodeling in the building where meetings were held. They said they did not know when the meetings would resume, or how frequently.

“We will notify them when we are ready to recommence,” hospital spokeswoman JoLynn de la Torre said. “It’s too early to actually pin down a date.”

But group members said they were told it was gone forever. And former group leader Don Reeb said that while the hospital is likely to reinstate the program, meetings would be cut from seven hours a week to one.

“We had a pretty good thing going,” said Reeb, who lost his part-time position as the group’s moderator when the program was discontinued. The hospital paid him $400 a month.

“The program was well known in the community for what it had to offer,” he said. “But they weren’t making any money off of it.”

Reeb said 80% of the recovering addicts who completed the program have stayed sober. The national average for maintaining sobriety after treatment is 33%, he said.

“It was a complete program what they offered, from start to finish,” said Roxanne, a regular meeting-goer who has been sober for nearly two years. “You can’t just detox and be let out onto the streets. You just won’t make it.”

Program director Dr. Timothy Fields could not be reached for comment. Although operators at the hospital said he had been in the office this week, hospital administrators said he had been out with the flu.

Reeb said the program consisted of meetings on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays that he had moderated for the last 10 years. During those sessions, 30 to 45 people would gather to discuss their addictions and methods of coping.

On Sundays, members attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at the hospital. About two weeks ago, when flooding in another part of the hospital required the meeting room to be used as a storage area, those meetings were also canceled, Reeb said.

“I understand the need to make business decisions, but this just seems particularly cold,” said Karen, another group member.

While there are other programs the group members can attend, she said, there is a bond that forms between members who have gone through treatment together. They come to rely on each other and on a predictable setting, she said.

“They teach that fellowship is 50% of recovery,” she said, noting that of the 11 people who began treatment with her, only the four who attended the continued care meetings have remained sober.

“It took me six months to feel comfortable enough to talk. Now I’m suddenly in this awkward situation of, how do I rebuild this network?”

Since the program ended, Reeb has met with group members at a local restaurant once a week, for free.

“They’ve depended on me for 10 years, and now all of a sudden I don’t have the answers,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”