Summary/Abstract

Maine Medications Assisted Recovery is coming back to southern Maine. Tim Cheney and Adrian Hooper of The Choopers Foundation and Marty O'Brien of the well established Grace Street Services of Lewiston Maine have joined together to reopen the Sanford Medication Assisted Recovery Center formerly know as the Sanford Methadone Clinic.

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SANFORD, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Despite all the attention to Maine’s heroin problem in recent months, the state’s second most-populous county has no methadone treatment clinic. But that is apparently going to change. Two men with lots of experience in substance abuse treatment and recovery  are preparing to re-open the former Spectrum clinic in Sanford. The clinic shut down at the end of last summer, in part because the state had reduced Medicaid reimbursement for methadone treatment.

Marty O’Brien and Tim Cheney are partners in Grace Street Services, which operates treatment facilities in Lewiston and Portland. Cheney is also co-founder of Chooper’s Guide, a national database for addiction recovery. Chooper’s Foundation will help to subsidize the clinic operation when needed. Cheney and O’Brien say they are planning to operate the Sanford clinic with methadone and Suboxone medications, together with extensive counseling and therapy. They say that combination is the only effective way to help people beat the addiction to heroin and other opiate drugs.

Sanford Police Chief Thomas Connolly, Jr., agrees. Connolly says he is a believer in what he calls “evidence based” therapy, which combines medication assisted treatment and intensive counseling. Like Cheney and O’Brien, the Chief says that combination is the best way to help most heroin addicts.

The plan is for the clinic to begin with offering Suboxone and Vivitrol, another treatment drug that is less well known. The counseling part of the therapy would also begin at that time. Cheney and O’Brien say the licensing and permit process for methadone is more complex, and will take longer to secure the needed approvals. Methadone, they say, is considered the “gold standard” for opiate treatment.

Chief Connolly says the clinic will also need to get local permits from the city. The goal is for the clinic to open in less than two months.