GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The front lines of the opioid war form in pre-dawn darkness outside West Michigan’s six methadone clinics.
“I get up, no matter how sick I am,” Patrick Pierce told Target 8. “I gotta get my clothes on, gotta get in the car and fight my way on to the freeway.”
For a year, Pierce has made the early morning, 26-mile round-trip to the Southside Health Center in Grand Rapids from his home in Standale.
“There’s just too many people,” Pierce said of the crowd that gathers for early morning dosing. “What they’re doing is good, but they need to make some reforms. It’s ridiculous to go stand in line with 100 people.”
The client population at the clinic on Kalamazoo Avenue SE has doubled in the last five years. The center, operated by Cherry Health in Grand Rapids, now serves 1,013 people.
Forty percent of those clients get dosed on site daily, while the rest have earned the privilege — through clean urine tests — of obtaining some “take-home” doses.
FULL STORY: WOOD TV