After more than a year pursuing a state license, a small treatment center on Penikese island is preparing to open its doors. The newly-licensed Penikese, a program for adolescent boys with substance abuse and mental health issues, expects to open June 23.

The Island’s only intensive outpatient substance abuse program, New Paths Recovery, was inaugurated with a five-year grant from the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital in the summer of 2010. That grant is set to expire in 10 months.

Island police and members of the drug treatment community agree that heroin use on the Island is on the rise, along with fatal drug overdoses.

As I learned firsthand over recent years, a critical component of this support must be sober living homes. These are the facilities that are meant to provide people with an opportunity to recover in a safe environment.

The 50-year-old man wearing a plaid shirt said he struggled with heroin addiction for years. He lost a house and everything else when he was addicted, he said, once selling his truck for drugs.

Things changed when his daughter was born. He was clean at the time and while before he had “no compunction or moral dilemma” about doing drugs, now “something there needed me.”

Several years ago I worked with a highly intelligent, sophisticated couple who were severely addicted to heroin. Month after month they struggled to stop, but over and over they found themselves “chasing the high” by taking larger amounts of intravenous heroin or scoring smaller amounts just to keep themselves functional. Finally, they left the States and moved to a kibbutz for a year. They went through a difficult and painful withdrawal syndrome but then lived a drug-free but isolated life for over a year.

With prescription drug addiction on the rise both nationwide and on Martha’s Vineyard, a well-attended forum about the issue this week focused on how the community can better fight the growing problem.

About 50 people gathered at the high school Wednesday to hear from a panel of community members and addiction experts, and to participate in a discussion about how Vineyarders can get help for prescription drug addiction.

Vineyard House: Women Find Island Haven For Recovery

By ALEXIS TONTI

On March 19, 2001, the first woman moved into Vineyard House's
third and newest residence - a house dedicated solely to Island
women in need of a safe living environment during the early stages of
recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. More than a year later, 14
women have already moved through the house, most staying for between one
and three months. Four live there now.

In greater numbers than ever before, Islanders are looking for
- and finding - the help to get clean and sober.