NJ Spotlight published the following article on September 12, 2014. To read the full article, click here.
TIGHTER REGULATION SOUGHT FOR ‘SOBER LIVING’ HOMES FOR RECOVERING ADDICTS
Involuntary commitment in some cases also sought by advocates who note that addiction qualifies as mental illness
To Alba Herrera, the overdose death of her son Nick Rohdes never should have happened.
In February, the 24-year-old Rohdes was evicted from a so-called sober living home that he was staying in in Lambertville after relapsing in his drug use, Herrera said. Sober living facilities are intended to provide a safe, transitional environment for residents who are in recovery, but don’t offer the full set of services available at drug rehabilitation facilities.
After being evicted, Rohdes called his mother and asked if he could stay with her, but didn’t tell her that he had been evicted or that he had relapsed. She took him in, and that night he overdosed from heroin and died.
After finding her son the next day, she went to the sober living facility.
“I asked them, ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ And they said your son was a grown man and he made his own decisions, and I was flabbergasted. I was, like, ‘Seriously? He made his own decision?’ ” said Herrera, a former Colts Neck resident who now lives in Levittown, Pa. “Someone suffering from addiction does not make decisions; the addiction makes the decision for them. And I said, ‘Would you have done this if he was suffering from diabetes and he went into diabetic shock?’ And he had no answer for me.”
She’s now working with state legislators to enact a pair of bills designed to prevent overdoses by increasing regulation of sober living and halfway houses and by making it easier for those with addictions to be involuntarily committed to psychiatric care. For example, the regulations would require that next of kin be contacted if people are evicted from such facilities, unless the person isn’t incapacitated and requests that family not be contacted.
The regulation bill, A-3228, has drawn opposition from organizations that operate sober living facilities, They say the bill would create regulatory burdens that could put some facilities out of business. In addition, mental-health advocates worry that the involuntary commitment bill may be too sweeping.