Street Roots vendor Nettie Johnson is close to fulfilling a long-cherished dream. She is on track to graduate in April with a degree in addiction counseling from Portland Community College.
Nettie is beginning her third and final term as an intern at Acadia NW, a Portland-area, state-certified drug and alcohol treatment, DUII diversion and intensive outpatient center started in 2003. Having completed all her other requirements, she will graduate once she finishes her internship.
“More than anything, what pushes me to stick with it is the people downtown on the sidewalks and on the freeways under those tents, 24/7, with a ‘homeless’ label like a tombstone,” Nettie said.
“It hurts me to see young people digging through the garbage who don’t have any way off alcohol and drugs,” she said. “Nobody really has the answer for them. They have been broke down so long they can’t even imagine how to get out of the mess they’re in. And it’s getting worse.”
Nettie was addicted to heroin at the age of 14.
“I’m 59 now. I never found out about recovery, what it really meant, until 2004 when I was court-ordered to De Paul Treatment Center. I saw a couple ladies in there that looked like me, but they weren’t using; they were working. And I just thought, wow,” she said.
“It’s been a rough, rough road. It wasn’t just the issues with the drugs; it was family issues before I started using that had to be worked out,” she said.
VENDOR PROFILE: Getting clean opens doors for Nettie
Nettie is passionate about making a difference in the lives of those experiencing chronic drug addiction.
“I learned through working with Street Roots that a lot of people need outpatient services like the ones offered here at Acadia NW,” she said. “When people come out of homelessness or if they are having a rough spot once they get into affordable housing, they get to a point where they may give up. It’s important to know there is a program that is easily accessible, that they can come here and get an assessment, and they will meet you where you are.”
For Heather Warren King, owner of Acadia NW, and director Craig Chan, peer-to-peer support interns like Nettie are an invaluable addition.
“Nettie has a courage about her that makes me sit up a little straighter and ask what more can I do?” King said. “She brings a whole new understanding from another point of view. She came in with a breath of fresh air for us. She is talking to Jeff Merkley at Street Roots; she has new information; she is vibrant, young. We want what Nettie has,” she said.
“I believe the best counselors are a combination of people with lived experience as well as education to go along with that,” Chan said. “The benefit of peer-to-peer recovery is well documented.”
Nettie believes in Acadia NW as much as they believe in her. Though Acadia NW is tiny in comparison to the mega drug and alcohol treatment centers like Betty Ford and Acadia Healthcare (no relation), she believes they have developed an effective solution to Portland’s homeless crisis.
“I’ve never been shown a format in my whole entire recovery to help me understand how we get to this epidemic of human beings stuck under a blue tarp,” Nettie said. “They take you from non-drinker to addict, walk you through every choice that led you to get there so you don’t keep waking up thinking how will I get straight? I’m gonna just mess up, relapse again,” she said.
“The program they teach leads you back to that first thought where you took one beer and you were OK, then you drank till you blacked out. Then you decided to smoke some pot, then a puff of crack, then your buddy hooks you up with a new drug in town and you try it,” Nettie said.
VENDOR WRITING: Nettie shares her experiences with addiction, discrimination and hope
Chan, who developed the educational program they use at Acadia NW, believes drug use, abuse and dependence exists as a continuum.
“If you peer under the tarps,” he said, “you will find many people suffering from chronic late-stage addictions. But they didn’t start there. They started in the same houses everyone started in, wrapped in a blanket with their mothers feeding them. It was through a series of events that they ended up there. When I get somebody in late-stage drug addiction, almost every one will say to me, ‘How did this happen? How did I get here?’ Given the time, I will back them up and move them through the choices they’ve made. This process is not to point out mistakes; it’s to help people understand how they’ve ended up here. No one has sat them down to look at the roads they’ve taken. We can give people a context to homelessness and addiction in a way they haven’t had so far. It’s a piece that goes missing all the time,” he said.
Nettie agreed.
“Until you understand how that person traveled that journey and became homeless, you can do whatever you want; you can feed him lunch, apples, oranges,” she said. “You can give him money, socks, shoes, the newspaper. But that person, a human being, is being robbed by society because they are not being given what they need — and that’s treatment. We need to get them the information they need so they can take a different look at why they are out there.”
“Other folks come to me, and they explain how bad off they are on meth or heroin and they’ve tried everything and there’s nowhere for them to go because there are too many hurdles for them to jump through to get any type of help. When (Chan) showed us the educational form, I started to look at people differently. And now I know I can give them some hope,” Nettie said.
Nettie would like all people suffering from addiction on the streets to know help is as close as a No. 12 TriMet bus.
“People should understand there is an outpatient program in the community that is easy to get to,” she said. “You can get an assessment and get the education to understand why you are stuck out there. Being that they do take (Oregon Health Plan), it’s easy for a person to come in and get what they need.”
Acadia NW’s main office is at 10101 Barbur Blvd., Suite 101. It has a second office at 504 Main St. in Oregon City.
Acadia NW claims a high success rate over its 17 years of service — around 85%. It measures success by the resolution of legal issues, mainly stemming from charges of driving under the influence of intoxicants. Seventy five percent of Acadia NW’s clients are referred through the court system.
“I would also measure success with each individual if they reach a sense of peace, sobriety, stability within a support network and a feeling of getting to a starting point of well being,” said Mala Kaufman, development director.
“We also measure success when we have a client who returns or sends us someone else,” King said. “There are a few who come back and say I need a tune up. Some say there is nowhere else they want to go. One of our taglines is no shame, no stigma, ever.”
“It’s more than just a tagline; that’s our culture here,” Chan added. “In a field where we deal with a chronic relapsing disorder, often numbers can be misleading. We have to look at success rates with improved quality of life.”
Nettie has strong feelings about prioritizing treatment for Portland’s homeless population.
“We have to be careful about choices we make that affect young American kids who are dying daily on drugs. It probably starts in the mayor’s office. Put some people out there willing to find out what’s really wrong, get some better information into the courtrooms because they are constantly saying they don’t know what to do; they’ve been saying that for years. You go under those tarps, you’ve got heroin, meth, sexual abuse, alcohol, mental health, domestic violence, and treatment is the only way to deal with all that.”
“Nettie’s voice is profound and truthful and real,” said clinical director Dick Johnson, “but it’s not being heard with enough intensity at the decision-making level. Homelessness is not the problem; it’s the symptom.”
Chan said the system is broken.
“There are places that are doing so much better. Australia. Cuba. Canada,” he said. “Places where they walk people right over to treatment when they come in for help. It takes days, weeks, months here. It’s so hard to get into residential treatment. People line up at the door at 5 a.m., and they only see the first five.”
“It’s not a money problem,” Johnson said. “It’s efficiency and allocation. The will gets eroded by the process.”
“But the more Netties we can have here,” Chan said, “give them a foot up in their careers as they go on to do great things in their field, that’s success for us. That’s the right direction.”