The opioid crisis in The Green Mountain State is worsening. Governor Scott’s Opioid Coordination Council has correctly concluded that prevention and recovery are the areas which are crucial to a successful response.
What faces Vermont is truly terrifying. Statistics vary, but some studies suggest that only one person out of 38 who enters substance abuse treatment will successfully overcome their condition. The “average” person relapses 16 times or more. Dave Riegel of Vermont Foundation of Recovery (a non-profit which assists those in recovery with support and housing) explains that current research shows that the risk of relapse does not substantially decline until a person has been substance free for three to five years.
Whatever the State of Vermont may spend on prevention, treatment, and recovery services, I do not perceive how the government can possibly undertake to provide housing and oversight for those in recovery — certainly not for five years. Yet, nothing could be more important than providing these people with support and means. The greatest contribution on the front lines of this epidemic continues to come from those who themselves have emerged from the Hell of drug dependency – we must shepherd people out of treatment, through recovery, and into peer positions where they become the force for continued reinforcement.
Vermont simply cannot shoulder the expense of a five-year support for each person in recovery: the government can’t, and private industry can’t. But if those in recovery return immediately to their previous social circles, or jobs, or family situations, they are very often thrown back into the very network of stresses and temptations that was woven into their addiction: they are likely to relapse. During recovery, people need support and community ties, yet these are the very things that were often already lacking. (This is borne out by many recent studies).
Author Wendell Berry has argued that increased industrialization, and the death of the family farm, has eroded community ties and caused increased alienation and isolation, which has led to increased drug use. Vermont’s deteriorating small towns reflect this decay as clearly as its pockets of urban despair. But whether or not urbanization has caused increased rates of addiction, returning to the land is most definitely a cure. Farming programs have proven effective for returning veterans with PTSD (including here in Vermont, like Jon Turner at Wild Roots Farm), for inmates in prisons, impoverished families in inner cities, rape victims, sufferers of autism – the list is long, and affirms our common sense: working with the soil, and with animals, is therapeutic.
Vermont requires a working model of a recovery program that employs the therapeutic and profit-making benefits of farming while improving recovery rates, training people in a needed trade, combating stigma and providing a healthy local product to our communities. This model could be at least partly self-funded, and thus more economically sustainable. Vermont would be restoring farms, training farmers, and rebuilding our economy and weakened communities upon the agriculture which has always been our sustenance here – with our most dispossessed and needy fellow citizens.
I propose that we create such a model. Upon completion of a course of treatment, people in recovery can transition to a group home of peers, on a small farm. Reinforced by others and shielded from the drugs that infest most of our workplaces, these people can learn how to farm, how to eat and sleep more healthily, and take pride and hope in earning their keep. Products can be sold locally as well as out-of-state. Profits come back to the facility, with the ultimate goal of profitability but the immediate benefit of reduced cost and increased likelihood of success. Perhaps a negative could be turned to a positive: will localvores purchase a “Recovery Kielbasa” or “Recovery Bacon” when they pick up fresh turnip greens at the “Recovery Farm Stand”? A whole new kind of CSA…
This can be done, and here’s how: pool financial resources for a pilot project, combining private contributions, Legislative grant and/or financing, and a private or public land grant. Vermont Foundation of Recovery or other experienced professionals would manage the group living situation, including housing rules, accountability to participation in a program of recovery, and linking individuals with the therapeutic/life skill development resources needed. Concurrently, an experienced farmer would oversee efforts to bring the land into productive use, and assess markets, available resources, and the wishes of the group. The range of potential ventures depends on the land – maple syrup, vegetables, organic pastured poultry, hogs, eggs. Some products may succeed well; others may be less viable. This is farming. But overheads would be low. Eventually, if profitability was achieved the State would be collecting taxes instead of subsidizing beds.
If the Legislature loaned (or granted) a sum to this pilot venture (perhaps out of that tobacco settlement?), a Vermonter donated (or sold at very reduced cost) an appropriate farmhouse and land, and private citizens could direct funds to this effort, then perhaps the nation’s first successful “Agricovery” facility could be created right now. We can train future small businesspeople while healing illness; reduce expenses while encouraging local economic growth. This can and MUST succeed.
If you have interest in contributing experience, land, financing, equipment, or other support to make this idea become a working reality, please contact me at farmerjohnklar@gmail.com. We must form a working group to partner communities with government to push back against this scourge: there is no bureaucratic solution, so let’s get back to the land.
(Previously published at vtdigger.org)
John Klar 