####################################
The Spokesman-Review
27-YEAR-OLD RECOVERING FENTANYL ADDICT SAYS RECOVERY POSSIBLE, WITH HELP
KREM
KHQ
The Center Spokane
The Spokesman-Review
27-YEAR-OLD RECOVERING FENTANYL ADDICT SAYS RECOVERY POSSIBLE, WITH HELP
By Nika Bartoo-Smith
(VANCOUVER, WASH.) COLUMBIAN
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic sent the world into lockdown in 2020, Niles Haas reached out to his family for help. They did not have much of a relationship – he had struggled with addiction for years, and things had spiraled out of control since he tried fentanyl in 2019.
“I figured with all the things that were going on and how quickly it was happening and how fast my life was spiraling out of control, I had been thinking for some time ... ‘If I die from this, I at least want my family to know what was happening,’” Haas said.
At that point, dying from fentanyl was a serious possibility. In 2021, 51 people in Clark County died of a fentanyl overdose, according to Clark County Public Health data.
Haas dedicated himself to recovery and, after a lot of hard work and discipline, has now been clean for nine months. But the dangers of fentanyl pills, often called “blues,” continue plaguing many people he knows and loves.
“I’m not trying to make it sound like it’s the end of the world or anything,” he said. “But this fentanyl problem is only gonna get worse until we start pulling together and making some big changes.”
Struggling with pain
Haas, now 27, was first prescribed OxyContin by his doctor in 2018. After spending years as a dancer, he struggled with chronic knee and back pain. Haas asked his doctor for something non-addictive for the pain, he said.
He was given a prescription for OxyContin and quickly became addicted, with easy access to refills.
“I think I always liked the way the opiates made me feel because there’s a lot of trauma that I went through growing up,” he said. “It was an out.”
By 2019, he was semi-regularly abusing OxyContin. He bought the pills illegally from a dealer.
One day, in the midst of experiencing withdrawal symptoms for the first time, Haas went to one of his dealers, who gave him what he thought was more OxyContin, he said.
But immediately after crushing the pill and snorting it, Haas said, he knew something was different.
“I was so high I was scared I was gonna die,” Haas said. “And it just tore my life apart so quickly.”
What he had thought was Oxy-Contin was actually an illicitly manufactured fentanyl pill, he said.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We’ve done so many funerals, it’s just tragic,” said Vicky Smith, co-founder and program director of XChange Recovery in Clark County. “It’s so prevalent in the community.”
Struggle with fentanyl
Haas doesn’t remember much about the last two years. He lived with his girlfriend for a while before living in his car, which was soon after hit and totaled. He then spent months living on the streets.
Throughout this time, he was using fentanyl.
“It happened so quickly that I couldn’t even tell it was happening to me,” he said.
Aware of the dangers of overdosing, Haas always carried Naloxone, a drug that reduces the effects of an overdose. He had to use Naloxone multiple times, overdosing at least seven times that he can remember, he said.
“(It was) years of pain, and there’s just no promising you’re gonna make it out alive with something like this,” Haas said.
Haas kept using fentanyl. It hurt too much to quit. Withdrawal caused some of the most painful moments of his life.
Withdrawal felt 100 times worse than a typical flu, he said. He frequently experienced night terrors and weeks on end of little to no sleep.
For those who have never experienced withdrawal, he compared the experience to cellphone addiction.
“Just imagine putting away your cellphone. And all the times you think about grabbing it, you can’t grab it,” he said. “With fentanyl, it’s like wanting to grab your phone, but if you don’t grab it, you’re gonna get so sick that you’ll just do anything to get it.”
Finding help
Haas entered a number of 30-day treatment programs, both inpatient and outpatient, with help from his mom, Lori Haas. Time and again, he relapsed.
His mom often found herself at a loss for what to do. ” There is no book,” she said. “Because if there was, I would have opened the book up and I would have gone right to that chapter.”
In the end, she came to accept that only her son could save himself. “He had to just come to that decision himself,” she said. “All that wanting I have isn’t gonna make him change. I can’t make him change.”
Haas eventually found XChange Recovery, a faith-based addiction treatment organization in Ridgefield. He entered the program January but quickly returned to the freezing streets.
“When I first came to the XChange, I came in hot. Seven days in detox,” Haas said. “That’s not enough time to heal from something like fentanyl.”
Shortly after relapsing, he reached out again for help and met Lance Gayton, an XChange program supervisor who had struggled with opioid addiction since the age of 11. Gayton, now 42, has been clean for more than five years.
“I was telling Lance, I would really do anything,” Haas said. “I was willing to do whatever these guys said because it feels like I tried everything else.”
Getting clean
Following Gayton’s lead, Haas began to see how he could recover.
“That’s why peer support is so effective,” Gayton said. “Because we have that lived experience and we’ve come out on the other side. We can help individuals emulate something similar, depending on their goals.”
Gayton recommended sending Haas to a 30-day treatment program in Clallam County to separate him from his connections in Vancouver. This type of separation had worked for Gayton when he first got clean.
After the treatment, Haas returned to XChange, where he lived in one of XChange’s recovery houses with several other men in the program. He stuck diligently to the program’s structure, and finally, it worked.
“He’s so successful because he did everything that he said he would do,” Gayton said. “He followed it through. And he’s a miracle.”
Medication-assisted treatment
Throughout his recovery, Haas has found success with medication- assisted treatment, which involves the use of drugs like Suboxone to normalize brain chemistry and ease withdrawal symptoms.
The concept of addicts using medication to heal, however, is not accepted by everyone. Before getting to XChange, Haas and his mom had trouble finding a longterm treatment center that allowed it.
“There’s this stigma that because there are people who have abused it, because it contains an opioid, that it’s just replacing something that you’re using. But that’s not even how Suboxone works,” Haas said.
Medication has helped stabilize his condition over time, making his recovery more sustainable, he said.
Haas hopes he can now be that person for others – proof that it is possible to move past fentanyl addiction. “If I could save somebody’s life by just giving them a warning,” he said, “I hope that there’s something that I can say to someone, even if it affects just one person.”
Niles Haas, a 27-year-old man from Vancouver, Wash., was able to overcome a fentanyl addiction through medication-assisted treatment and support from XChange Recovery. Haas lives and works at XChange’s Heart Change House, where he helps fellow participants navigate their recoveries.
AMANDA COWAN/ COLUMBIAN
####################################
KREM
SPOKANE, Wash. — While touring a homeless shelter in western Washington Wednesday, Gov. Jay Inslee was asked about the I-90 homeless encampment in Spokane, otherwise known as "Camp Hope."
"The state's position is we want to close and folks to move into better housing away from Camp Hope as soon as possible," Inslee said.
People have been camping on the WSDOT property for ten months. With millions of dollars earmarked to help the homeless, Inslee says there has been "significant progress."
"The number of people there I think has come down from about 600 to 400 or in that range," Inslee said. "We are very, very aggressively looking for other housing solutions for them."
Local leaders say that work isn't happening quick enough. Spokane County has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation and local leaders plan to clear people out by Nov. 15.
The city of Spokane says outreach work will continue at the Trent Shelter, which the mayor says is a safer, more humane alternative to sleeping outside.
"Four weeks from now, that Trent Shelter, no matter who runs it, is going to be full," Jewels Helping Hands Executive Director Julie Garcia said.
The city is now working with the Salvation Army to create more space at the Trent Shelter and Catholic Charities could open the former Quality Inn hotel as soon as Dec. 1. However, Gov. Inslee worries that putting speed ahead of placement could have even worse consequences.
"Now, some people in the community don't want to see them just pushed into another park in Spokane, they want them to have some other housing solution so that this doesn't just create a Camp Hope 2 and that's what we're doing," Inslee said. "Very dedicated to that as humanly possible."
The most recent numbers put the state's homeless population at 83,000. Nearly half of them live in King County.
####################################
KHQ
SPOKANE, Wash. - Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward nominated Kim McCollim to be the new director of the city's Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services division.
McCollim worked with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the past two decades. She replaces John Hall, who left the role just three months after the mayor appointed him.
Prior to joining HUD, McCollim worked for the City of Spokane for more than six years, including as program manager and the human services assistant to the director.
“I hope to combine my HUD knowledge of programs and funding streams with my history at the city to assist the mayor, city council, and community partners in the development of additional affordable housing to decrease the number of unhoused individuals and families in Spokane,” McCollim said.
The Spokane City Council will vote on McCollim's nomination at its next meeting on Nov. 7.
####################################
The Center Spokane
(The Center Square) – Washington Gov. Jay Inslee gave a high-level preview of what he will push for during next year’s legislative session to combat homelessness in Washington state from Seattle on Wednesday afternoon.
“We know this is a crisis in the state of Washington,” Inslee said at a press conference from the Civic Hotel. “We know we have a long ways to go. But I am pleased to say that we are making solid progress on this effort. In the last several months we’ve seen quite a number of these encampments removed from our right-of-ways [sic].”
Inslee attributed that progress to the Rights-of-Way Safety Initiative meant to deliver housing and services to people living in certain state-owned rights-of-way, the result of a proposal the governor submitted the state Legislature this year.
King County receive $49.2 million dollar out of the state’s total $143.3 million in funding from the initiative.
According to the King County Regional Homeless Authority, that has translated into four homeless encampments in the county shut down under the initiative, including the removal of garbage and more than 110 people being moved to safe lodging.
Several times during the press conference, Inslee mentioned the end-of-August cleanup of the large homeless encampment underneath the Interstate 5 and Interstate 90 junction in Seattle near the intersection of 10th Avenue South and South Dearborn Street that saw tons of garbage hauled away and getting 75 people into shelter, housing, or treatment.
Although no specific figures were mentioned, Inslee said he looked to build on lawmakers allocating more than $800 million for homeless programs during this year’s legislative session.
“I’m reasonably confident that we will do what we normally have done and increase our commitment financially from the state, from multiple perspectives,” the governor said of the upcoming legislative session.
Inslee offered a broad legislative outline of a plan to address homelessness in Washington state, including more cleanups of homeless camps along freeways across the state under the Rights-of-Way Initiative.
He also called for legislation aimed at constructing more housing at prices that are more affordable for more people.
“But fundamentally we need more housing in the state of Washington,” Inslee said, before going on to work in a plug for the Evergreen State. “We’re 76,000 units of housing short, because we’ve had hundreds of thousands of people moving to the state of Washington because we have such a great economy, because we’re the nicest place to live in the United States.”
Inslee touted the building of tiny home villages in Seattle and other cities as part of the solution to the homeless crisis.
On Monday, Inslee toured Vancouver’s first Safe Stay Community that includes small modular pallet shelters that can house the homeless, praising the city’s efforts as a model for addressing homelessness.
The governor also mentioned that he and lawmakers are looking at ways to help low-income renters and home buyers, including expanding the real estate excise tax exemption for people who sell their homes to first-time home buyers in the state’s program.
“I think it’s important as we do this, we provide solutions throughout the spectrum of housing,” Inslee said. “How to get somebody into a tiny house next week. How to get somebody in a converted hotel next month. How to build a new facility of 100 units like I saw in Vancouver yesterday, or the day before yesterday, that’s a more permanent situation.”
The governor concluded, “We need to make investments throughout that spectrum, and I think we’re on the beam doing that.”