The Avery Mill Building on Water Avenue is the site of a new treatment center for people addicted to opioids.
Based on a notation on a remodeling permit, I reported in April that an “outpatient addiction treatment facility” was going into the historic Avery Mill Building on the Albany riverfront. Today I found out a little more.
On a bike ride on my usual route, I noticed people putting up a sign on the building, one of Albany’s oldest. I stopped and got to talk with James Page, the clinic director of what will be a “comprehensive treatment center” offering “medication assisted treatment” for people suffering from “opioid use disorder.”
The center is scheduled to open Nov. 1. It will be the seventh of its kind in Oregon operated by Acadia Healthcare. Acadia says on its website that it has 227 treatment centers in 40 states offering treatment for various behavioral health and substance abuse disorders.
The company says medication-assisted treatment, the program the Albany center will provide, is a “specialized form of outpatient care for adults who have been struggling with opioid addiction. MAT features the use of certain prescription medications that allow you to stop using opioids without experiencing withdrawal symptoms, as well as therapy to help you make the lifestyle changes that will promote long-term recovery.”
The other six Oregon centers of this kind are in Portland (four of them there), Salem and Medford. Page told me the Albany location will be helpful for patients in Linn County who now have to make long daily trips for their treatment.
Page is from Eugene and formerly worked at a Samaritan Health treatment facility in Lebanon.
The Albany center, at 213 Water Ave. N.W., and its phone number are already shown on a map included with the Acadia Healthcare website. But don’t try to call it yet. Page said the phone number is not yet in use. (hh)
Here’s the sign that attracted my attention on Friday.
This is the building my first salon “Steamboat Annies” was in in 1974. I am glad the building is being preserved but, it looks nothing like it used to. I still wish I was there.
What with the recent jump in opioid use and the subsequent increase in overdose deaths, this clinic is a welcome addition against the scourge of addiction.
Will this treatment facility take “walk in street addicts” w/o insurance. Or only insurance covered addicts so they can gouge insurance companies? These kinds of treatment places are nothing more than those “blow smoke up your”…places of the late 1800’s. Can I tell ya where to find my sympathy’s in the dictionary??!!