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Sweetwater County Law Enforcement Wants Offenders To Get Sober, And Stay Out Of Jail

Miles Bryan

26-year-old Cameron Largent lives with his mother in a big suburban house in Rock Springs. His favorite spot at home is the basement couch, where he’s set up to play the fantasy video game World of Warcraft.

“I’m a priest,” he says. “So my job is to run around and heal people. [my character] is the highest level you can get: level 100.”

Largent has had a lot of time to level up recently: he has been sober for six months. It’s the longest he has gone without drinking for years.

“By the time I was sixteen I was drinking four nights a week. Eighteen, I was drunk every single night. Nineteen, twenty years old, I figured out the alcoholic’s trick that, if you have a hangover, you can start drinking in the morning to make the hangover go away. So by then I was drinking all day every day.”

Credit Miles Bryan
Inmates at Sweetwater County Detention Center Near Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Since then Largent has been in and out of jail for DUI’s and a burglary charge, and, cumulatively,  spent years in different kinds of treatment programs. He managed to stay sober for the last few years, but fell off the wagon about six months ago and got locked up again.

It was while in jail this last time that Largent was selected to be part of a  trial program of Vivitrol: a monthly shot that treats alcohol and opiate addiction. Largent received his first shot of the drug  on his last day in jail, about a month ago. He says the effects were immediate.

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“Before, when I was trying to not drink and someone, say, cracked a coke can, the first thing that entered my brain is someone is drinking a beer, and I want a beer. After the Vivitrol, things like that, triggers like that, they don’t even enter my mind. The craving isn’t there.”

Testimony like that has motivated law enforcementacross thecountry to start offering Vivitrol in jails and drug courts in recent years. Alkermes, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Vivitrol,  has donated doses of the drug to about thirty programs since Vivitrol was approved by the FDA to treat alcohol addiction in 2006 (the drug was approved to treat opiate addiction in 2010). Many more programs have found funding elsewhere.

Credit Miles Bryan
Control Room at Sweetwater County Detention Center.

Dr. ElinaChernyak helped get some free doses for the Rock Springs area  earlier this year: enough to give twenty-five offenders like Largent a shot on their way out of jail, and a shot a month later. She says, medically, Vivitrol is considered a “complete antagonist.” The drug binds with the brain’s opioid receptors and shuts them down, which means that while the Vivitrol is active opiate drugs and alcohol won’t make the patient feel high. Other opiate addiction medications like Methadone can actually give you a buzz, which historically hasn’t made them popular with law enforcement.

But the major difference between Vivitrol and other addiction treatment drugs is how you take it. The shot is administered only once a month.

“It eliminates the concerns we have with patient compliance,” Chernyak says.  “Meaning it doesn’t require a patient to remember to take the medication.”

But just because you don’t have to remember to take Vivitrol, doesn’t mean it's easy to obtain, especially if you aren't getting free doses. Without subsidies, a shot of Vivitrol costs about 1200 dollars.

“I think [Vivitrol] is probably more expensive, even with insurance, than many clients can afford,” says Terrence Walton, Director of Standards at the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

Walton says Vivitrol costs a lot more than other drugs that treat the same kinds of addictions, and because of that the public clinics that ex-addicts tend to go to often don’t stock it. Other, cheaper drugs like Methadone and Suboxone can work better than Vivitrol to treat addiction in some people, says Dr. Elina Chernyak.

And Walton is firm that Vivitrol is not a “wonder drug.” To treat it as such can be problematic, he says, because all rehabilitation programs need to also target the mental roots of addiction to be successful.

“When [Vivitrol] is truly effective is when it's used in combination with counseling to address the underlying issues,” Walton says.

But Vivitrol’s ability to shot down cravings, as well as the fact that it keeps you from feeling a buzz if you do slip up and try and get high, has made it very popular with law enforcement.

Credit Miles Bryan
Rock Springs Chief of Police Dwane Pacheco.

“If you don’t have the craving for thirty days you are probably going to be productive for thirty days,” says Dwane Pacheco, Chief of Police in Rock Springs.” “It means we don’t see that revolving door.”

According to Pacheco, sixty to eighty percent  of crime in the Rock Springs area is alcohol and drug related. Beds in the local jail cost $125 a night, and taxpayers pick up the tab. Without any subsidies, Vivitrol is pricey---about $1200 per dose. But Pacheco says he hopes the state will continue to fund the Vivitrol program here once the trial doses run out.

“If we can get them detoxed, and get them working, get them making their car payments and paying rent, then it is a lot better deal for the community,” he says.

Cameron Largent says he’s in counseling as well as on Vivitrol. He hopes that that will be enough to stay sober.

Well, that and a whole lot of World of Warcraft.

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