The effort comes as Governor Carcieri has proposed cutting $1.3 million from state spending on detoxification and psychiatric services.
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 26, 2006
PROVIDENCE -- Leslie Miller didn't think she had a problem. A mother and a successful jazz singer and songwriter in Newport, Miller leaned on a crutch at every turn. "If I needed energy, I'd do cocaine," she said yesterday. "If I needed to relax, I'd do pot." Miller also abused alcohol and prescription drugs, she says. That's in the past now. She's still singing, but is working toward a bachelor's degree at Rhode Island College. Eventually, she wants to be a lawyer. Miller is 45. She has been clean for two years. She came to the State House to advocate for substance-abuse treatment issues. For too long, she said, recovering drug addicts have been afraid to identify themselves as such because of the stigma that exists. "Diabetics aren't ashamed to say they're diabetic," Miller said. "We're the same." Miller also accepted the Recovering Person of the Year award from RI CARES -- Rhode Island Communities for Addiction Recovery Efforts. She is a newly elected member of the RI CARES board of directors. "You're an inspiration to those who think recovering from addiction is possible," another RI CARES board member, former state Sen. Tom Coderre, told Miller. Coderre struggled with his own addiction, to crack cocaine. Clean for three years, he now lobbies his former colleagues on issues including the state budget. Facing an estimated $300-million budget deficit this year and next, Governor Carcieri has proposed cutting $1.3 million from state spending on detoxification and psychiatric services in next year's budget for the Department of Mental Health Retardation and Hospitals, Coderre said. The proposed cuts -- which are now before the House Finance Committee -- represent nearly a fifth of the budget for inpatient substance-abuse treatment, said Gene Nadeau, acting associate director in the MHRH Division of Behavior Health Care. Coderre said the governor has proposed spending more on outpatient care to compensate for the cuts to inpatient care. But inpatient care is "so much more cost-effective," Coderre said, because it works. Addicts who don't get it are more likely to relapse, he said, and end up costing the state more money when they're treated in the emergency room, incarcerated or end up in inpatient treatment after all. RI CARES also supports bills that would: Two of the bills were sponsored by Sen. Harold M. Metts, D-Providence, who received the Legislator of the Year award from RI CARES. The third, the mental-health coverage parity bill, was sponsored by Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence, the keynote speaker at yesterday's rally. The expungement bill, which Perry has sponsored in past years, has passed the Senate but failed in the House due to the strength of the police lobby there, she said. Perry said she let Metts sponsor the bill this year in hopes that might tip the scales. Metts, who serves as a chaplain at the Adult Correctional Institutions, "has a lot of energy, and he has a lot of experience with people with these types of problems," she said. Perry has a personal stake in substance-abuse issues: Her father and niece both died of alcoholism, and "a close family member" of hers "teeters on the precipice of recovery and relapse," she said yesterday. She said she hoped Coderre could provide "a new face" for the addiction-recovery lobby, and help legislators to see the issues in a new light. "Sometimes it takes years and years," she said. Of the three bills RI CARES is pushing, all three were held in committee. One never even got a hearing. Last year at this time, a ballot question to restore the voting rights of felons on probation or parole was in the same position, Coderre noted. That question will appear on the ballot in November. "We're disappointed that there hasn't been more movement on some of this stuff," Coderre said. "It tells us that we have some more work to do." egudrais@projo.com / (401) 277-7045