MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — New Start is a new opioid treatment center now open for business in Milledgeville. Patients who qualify for the program will receive medication and counseling services to help with their addiction.
We visited to understand why they say opioid treatment is needed in the community and to hear from someone who's battled addiction themselves.
"Body aches, pain, sweating. Probably the worst pain I've gone through," said Charles Kofer.
These are just some of the withdrawal symptoms that Kofer, a longtime advocate for opioid treatment and recovery remembers.
"After joining the Army, I ended up getting addicted to heroin and opiates,” he says.
Kofer says he entered opiate treatment at the age of 21 and never took them again.
He continued to struggle with substance abuse with other drugs for more than a decade before becoming clean in 1999. He’s stayed clean for 23 years now.
He says programs like New Start's work for opiate addiction.
"They help with the people who are sick, locally, doing opiates, heroin, and fentanyl. It's a wonderful thing,” Kofer says.
According to New Start co-founder George Coley, Milledgeville is underserved for opiate treatment. He says Georgia's numbers are telling.
"In 2020, 13,000 people died from overdose on opioids. Statistics will show you that medication-assisted treatment facilities like ours, they reduce that number by 60%,” he says.
Coley says one of the biggest dangers in the opiate world is fentanyl.
"So, what do we do here? We keep people alive,” he says. “We keep them off the street, we keep them from going and getting something they have no idea what they're putting into their bodies."
New Start's opiate treatment facility works by first assessing patients to determine if they need treatment for addiction or not. Patients that qualify for the program will come to the center everyday to take a dose of methadone, which helps them curb their withdrawal symptoms.
Patients will then sign a waiver and take their dose, all in private.
According to Kofer, methadone blocks the brain’s receptors that allow you to feel the euphoric sensations from taking heroin or opiates.
“Eventually, you get to a place where it’s just not worth doing,” Kofer says.
They also offer counseling in personalized treatment plans, but New Start says they only have one mission.
"We're really building a treatment plan to get that patient back onto the road of recovery, back to restoration in the community, back to their families, their children back, their jobs back. Basically bringing a wholeness back to the community,” Coley says.
The closest opioid treatment facility to Milledgeville is in Macon, so Coley and his partner Marlon Lloyd expect to serve 400 to 500 patients in the community.