A West Virginia organization is planning to open an addiction recovery center in Parkersburg.
News outlets report that Recovery Point of West Virginia will open a peer-operated recovery facility for between 60 and 100 men thanks to recently approved funding by the Department of Health and Human Resources Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities.
The recovery center will be housed in a former National Guard armory. Recovery Point Executive Director Matt Boggs says renovations on the facility’s site will take between six months and a year to be completed once they begin.
The center will, at no cost to the individual, house men suffering from alcohol and substance abuse for an expected duration of between eight and 12 months.
Recovery Point already has locations in Charleston, Huntington and Bluefield.
West Virginia is struggling to keep up with the demand for treatment options for recovering addicts and if you’re a woman needing help, those options are even more scarce. Including co-ed, women and children, there are a total of 269 recovery beds for women, according the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services (DHHR).
A facility is on track to open Spring 2016, thanks in part to the Justice Reinvestment Act, but more funding is needed.
A non-medical, inpatient treatment facility opened in Bluefield this past year. It creates space for 20 recovering male addicts, with more beds planned. It’s modeled after the Healing Place in Huntington, a place also for men.
The Charleston facility is also funded in part by the West Virginia Justice Reinvestment Act. Thaxton says it’s a $6.6 million construction project that’s on track for completion in Spring 2016.
Rachel Thaxton is a recovering addict. She is now the program coordinator at the Recovery Place in Charleston.
Rachel Thaxton is the Program Coordinator of Recovery Point of Charleston, the first female treatment facility of its kind.
“When they said they were putting this facility in Charleston, I was just thrilled because I had been asking why there wasn’t one in West Virginia,” she said.
The DHHR says Recovery Point is different from other programs already available because this one houses a long-term, social model recovery program.
Thaxton is a recovering addict. She said she tried lots of other treatment options but none of them worked for her. She said it’s the peer-driven, social model that made a difference in her life. She has been clean for more than two years.
Thaxton says the program needs $500,000 of community support along with grants to complete funding for the project. The plan is to eventually house 140 women. But she expects that to be only a drop in the bucket when it comes to the need.
“I think that if they had one of these in every city in West Virginia they would fill up quickly,” she said.
Currently, there are recovery beds for women available in only 10 counties across the state.
These recovery beds for women are located in the following counties:
