By Hannah Williams
MORGANTOWN — Community understanding could be a possible solution to eliminating substance abuse in West Virginia, according to one of WVU’s leading physicians.
Dr. James Berry, associate professor from the WVU School of Medicine, said communities must be more embracing of addicts, remembering that addiction to harmful substances such as drugs and alcohol is a disease.
“Folks who are suffering from this disease need a degree of compassion and a degree of empathy and a willingness from communities, from neighbors, from loved ones to really help them get through treatment,” he said on WAJR-Clarksburg’s “The Gary Bowden Show.”
Berry, who is also an ordained elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, said he believes religious communities could show more compassion for those addicted. He also said it is important not to minimize the severity of the issue and the moral implications that accompany the decisions associated with substance abuse and addiction.
“Even though there are moral implications, there are still very powerful biologic forces at work and we need to recognize those and if we don’t recognize those then people aren’t going to get the help that they need. They’re going to feel guilty for having the disease, they’re going to be reluctant to reach out to those that can help them and when they do reach out, they’re not going to get the kind of response that’s really going to be therapeutic.”
Berry said people who abuse drugs and alcohol over and over again cause their brains to “reprogram.” Every time a person partakes in a harmful substance, an area of the brain called the accumbens, also known as the “reward center,” releases a chemical called dopamine. This chemical is also released during healthy activities such as exercising or eating a meal, but massive amounts are released with harmful substances. With the repetition of this process, the brain starts changing and eventually affects a person’s ability to make good deacons.
“The brain becomes hijacked in that way,” Berry said.
Part of the problem with the opioid epidemic could be that it is not seen as a disease, or as severe as other diseases. About 64,000 people died from overdoes in 2016 in the United States.
“Let’s say that there was some infectious disease killing that many people in a community or in a nation,” he said. “All media, all plugs would be pulled out to make sure we tackle this disease and keep people alive, but we don’t see the same sort of necessity and impact that this is having right now.”
With more attention to potential at-risk people, Berry thinks that this disease could be prevented.
“Really it’s entirely preventable,” he said. “If we did a much better job of helping identify kids at risk as far as various traumas and other adverse childhood experiences that they have in their life, if we did a better job at providing people the meaning and the hope that they have in life once they’ve been identified as being at risk. And then for those who are currently suffering from disease, if we could get them immediate access on demand, we could cure this problem.”
Berry said he believes Christ-centered recovery programs, such as Celebrate Recovery, are part of the answer to addressing addictive behavior around the state and the nation.
WVU also has a program, the Comprehensive Opioid Addiction Treatment (COAT) model that has provided thousands of patients with intensive treatment for substance abuse since 2004. It treats more than 600 patients each month. The program also helps other physicians around West Virginia prescribe medication effectively through one-on-one training.
