Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov.
At the West Virginia University Crisis Support and Recovery Center, the staff takes hope seriously. H-O-P-E is even spelled out in the steel railing inside their living quarters.
“The special thing that we have in this building is the people who work here, making it radically different. The people who care about the human on the other end. Everybody who works here takes the time to help the person in front of them,” Dr. Nikki Avon says.
The WVU CSRC is located in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle in Martinsburg. A native to this community, and trained at the Harper’s Ferry Family Medicine residency program, Arvon previously worked as a hospital doctor and primary care provider before finding her passion in recovery.
“I grew to love these people,” Arvon says of both her colleagues at the WVU CRSC but also of the patients she cares for.
Her patients are being treated for substance use disorders. The 16-bed, co-ed facility offers both addiction and mental health treatment in the form of immediate, short-term care.
“The way that we approach addiction medicine has changed drastically in the last 20 to 30 years. We used to be full of shame, negativity, horrible ways of treating people,” Arvon says, but her center is attempting to change that today.
“It is incredibly fulfilling to me and rewarding. I get to know my patients at a level that I never had before. We are a community that will step up to the plate and take care of each other,” she says.
“We’ll never get rid of addiction, that’s not realistic, but getting us out of an epidemic is. The people that I treat do not want to die. And this treatment is saving their lives.”
Healthcare is Human: Recovery Series is a podcast taking an in-depth look at individuals working in addiction treatment and recovery services in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Listen to Dr. Avon’s entire interview on Healthcare is Human here.
This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit, collaborative newsroom telling the complex stories of the region that deserve to be heard. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.
