Too many barriers to fighting addiction

May 20, 2006
HELEN HENDERSON

David Law looked out the window a year and a half ago and figured it was game over.

The snow was thick enough to hinder anyone from venturing forth, never mind an alcoholic heading for rehab in an electric wheelchair.

Law, an addiction therapist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, was waiting for Aaron Shelbourne, the first person who does not communicate verbally to be accepted into the centre's residential rehab program.

' I thought: `This guy isn't going to make it,'' the therapist recalled at a strictly teetotal get-together last month to celebrate one year of sobriety for Shelbourne.

Law was referring not just to the weather but also to the veritable mountain of other challenges Shelbourne was up against in his battle to get clean.

Shelbourne, 46, has cerebral palsy. He communicates by directing his eyes at letters on a board held by special personal assistants who act as his voice.

He was drowning in rye and cola when his mother died of emphysema and he vowed, in her memory, to get off the booze. That was the beginning of a 16-month battle for acceptance into treatment that culminated in the night Law finally saw a figure in a wheelchair struggling through the snow.

That night, the real test would begin for Shelbourne. One way or another all the queries of the last 16 months would be resolved.

How can someone who doesn't speak respond to counselling?

How can someone who doesn't walk take part in a residential program in a building that wasn't set up for wheelchairs?

How would Shelbourne cope in the shower or the washroom or at meals?

Who would be responsible for the personal attendants required to take care of his daily living needs?

How would his body respond to withdrawal?

To anyone who lives with a disability the questions were maddeningly predictable, the roadblocks all too familiar.

Somehow Shelbourne got over them. Somehow, against all odds, he started the journey to reclaim his life.
' The first five days of withdrawal were hell,' he recalls. But he got through the 21-day program. Now, like any recovering addict, he tackles sobriety one day at a time and hopes that his journey will pave the way for others.

Although people with disabilities have a disproportionately high incidence of substance abuse not the least because they must cope with high rates of poverty, unemployment and social isolation their access to recovery programs is too often limited.

It's a cause high on the agenda of the Ottawa-based Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres. Last fall, in partnership with the Canadian Abilities Foundation, which publishes Abilities magazine, it got $430,000 from Health Canada to help fund a three-year Access To Recovery project.

' It's a really big issue,' says national director Traci Walters. "It has been swept under the carpet for far too long.

' One of the things we hope to do is to reach out to (rehab) service providers and say: `What can we do to help?'"

Although little research has been documented about the subject, some estimates put the risk of substance abuse for persons with disabilities as high as 20 per cent greater than the overall population, says Jihan Abbas, the association's research and policy consultant.

' We also know many barriers exist that prevent persons with disabilities from accessing the supports they need once they have identified a problem."

One Canadian study noted that more than two-thirds of treatment services rate themselves as completely inaccessible to people with disabilities, Abbas says.

Those programs that are physically accessible don't necessarily provide things like attendant care services, accessible transportation and follow-up recovery material in alternate formats. And people with disabilities are rarely involved in education and treatment planning.

At a think tank held last September, the association had "a great reaction' to its substance abuse project, Abbas says. In addition to alcohol addiction, it also will be looking at things like prescription drugs and tobacco use, she adds.

Shelbourne says he started drinking in his teens in response to the physical spasms and mental pain he was going through. He still finds a lot of it too difficult to talk about publicly. But the strength of character he has summoned to cope stands out.

' I never knew anyone like Aaron,' says Simone Schmidt, the assistant who slogged through the snow with him that first night. "He's captivating, intense.

' It was December when we started and it was snowing and we had to take the subway because Wheel-Trans wasn't running,' says Schmidt, who met Shelbourne through the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health's "Getting Started' program. "I had never done anything like that before.

' It had taken so long to get the funding for Aaron to go through the (residential) program and even when we began we didn't know if some of it would come through. I started working without pay....

' Right up to the end they were saying he would have to make do with a day program. Three times he was supposed to go in residence and three times it was cancelled at the last minute. They needed a shower ramp; the police checks on attendants (supplied by the Ontario March of Dimes) hadn't come through it seemed like eight billion run-arounds....

' But after they got to know Aaron, they were okay."

' We're so proud of Aaron,' says his sister Kathleen Marion, who was among family members at last month's celebration.

For more information on the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres' Access To Recovery program, see the national projects section of its website at http://www.cailc.ca , or send email to cailc%23ca|substanceabuse or write 170 Laurier Ave. W., Suite 1104, Ottawa, Ont. K1P 5V5.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health describes programs for people with disabilities at http://www.camh.net/

You might also visit Health Canada's drug strategy and controlled substances programme website at http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/branch-dirgen/hecs-dgsesc/dscsp-psasc/index-eng.php

Email: thestar%23ca|hhenderson . Please include your phone number.
Additional articles by Helen Henderson