New Orleans awash in drugs, addicts more alone than ever

Brian Watkins initially thought that Hurricane Katrina had done him a favor. It forced him to flee to southwestern Louisiana, where he planned to make a fresh start and kick his heroin and methadone habit.

But then Hurricane Rita tore through that corner of the state, and Watkins was chased back to New Orleans.

“At first I thought I could just go out and socialize,” said Watkins, 23, who had been on probation for a narcotics offense before the storms. “But everybody was drugging. Everyone was strung out.”

Watkins had nowhere to turn to help him stay sober for the minimum 72 hours required under Louisiana law before an addict can be admitted to a longer-term residential detoxification program. Before Katrina, Charity Hospital of New Orleans provided free medical detox services to the city’s poor and uninsured. Patients could turn up at the hospital’s door and have access to one of the facility’s 20 beds. They were treated long enough to become eligible for admittance to a long-term program.

But Charity closed after the storm -- and for many, that closed off the best hope for getting clean.

Katrina’s other effects

Medical specialists and drug abuse counselors say the stresses of life since Katrina have caused substance abuse to skyrocket. Meanwhile, the city’s medical and psychological services are greatly impaired, and access to free medical detox facilities is zero. Yet all kinds of illicit drugs are more plentiful since Katrina, according to law enforcement officials.

Authorities think an increase in the drug trade has helped increase overall crime. They point not only to dealers but users desperate for their next fix.

“An untreated opiate addict is going to do whatever it takes to keep using,” said Robert Rainold, program director at New Orleans’ Bridge House, which offers a free, yearlong residential program to treat substance abuse. “We know how drug use generally relates to crime, so the more opportunities we have to treat people, the better off we’ll be.”

Since Katrina, most addicts seeking admission to a long-term inpatient recovery program have had to pay for initial medical detox at a private facility or else try to get clean on their own. Others are referred to Louisiana’s only existing medical detox facility, which has 12 beds and is in Lafayette, more than 100 miles from New Orleans.

Many end up detoxing after being jailed, said Cory Turner, executive director for Louisiana Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants, or CURE, an advocacy group for people on probation and parole.

“It’s always been a battle, but it’s a million times worse now,” said Turner. “There are a lot of [residential] substance abuse facilities, but people can’t get in them because they can’t stay clean for the 72 hours required for patient care.”

Additionally, about half the population that used to serve recovering addicts, including counselors and behavioral specialists, left town after Katrina, Rainold said.

Going it alone

Watkins was forced to detox on his own. It took him almost a month. In June, he was finally admitted to Odyssey House in New Orleans, a residential program to treat substance dependency.

Martin Hemard, 27, is also a resident there. Two years ago, he spent time at Charity Hospital, trying to combat his heroin addiction.

“They offered you a bed, medicine and a tub to relax in. They nursed you back to health,” Hemard recalled. “Then they sent you to youth social detox. You had a plan when you left.”

But when Hemard fell off the wagon and sought help after Katrina, he was stuck.

Hemard said he “called all over looking for help. But there was no place.” One private residential detox clinic said it would take him if he paid $10,000 in advance, Hemard recalled. The facility didn’t accept his medical insurance.

So he endured days of agony of detoxing alone, and was eventually admitted to Odyssey last summer. “This place gave me my life back, and I’m grateful for it,” said Hemard, who has a son and a daughter.

Making the efforts of addicts trying to kick the habit ever more tenuous is the increased availability of drugs in the city.

Supply and demand

New Orleans Police Sgt. Joseph Narcisse said drug dealers used to rely on a middleman for their supply. But Katrina displaced many to Houston, “a gateway city for drugs,” Narcisse said, and they were able to contact suppliers themselves.

Narcisse said police were now seeing a larger variety of drugs, including heroin and ecstasy, beyond the common crack cocaine. “There are not more drug dealers. The drugs are simply more plentiful and they are cheaper,” given the competition for customers in a city that is less than half its pre-Katrina size.

Michael Duffy, assistant secretary of the Office for Addictive Disorders at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said the state had not adequately addressed the medical detox issue “because of the lack of resources, not because we don’t think there’s a need.”

Duffy said his department was negotiating with the Louisiana State University hospital system to restore Charity Hospital’s 20 detox beds. The health department is also considering establishing medically managed detox programs in the city that would provide medication and 24-hour care outside of a hospital setting.

Every bit helps

Odyssey House plans to open a medical detox center with six beds this year, Carlson said.

Watkins, who is still completing his recovery program at Odyssey House, thinks every bit of help counts.

He remembers those brutal months when he would hit rock bottom and try to get clean but had nowhere to turn.

“Every time the realization of unmanageability would cross my mind, there was no hope, no destination; there was no refuge,” Watkins recalled.

“There is long-term treatment. But how do you get there? There’s that in-between.”

ann.simmons@latimes.com