Massachusetts Daily Detox Bed List Offers Hope
By Luke Schmaltz, VOICES Newsletter Editor
“Where there’s life, there’s hope.” – Elaine Mitrano
Every morning, Elaine Mitrano logs onto Facebook and updates the Massachusetts Daily Detox Bed List (MDDBL) – a vital resource for anyone struggling with substance use disorder (SUD).
Through this page, individuals seeking recovery can locate rehabilitation centers that are accepting patients immediately. Mitrano curates MDDBL from the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Access (MABHA) website.
In addition to posting the available detox beds, Mitrano also posts the birthdays and angelversarys (date of passing) of people who have died from substance use disorder. She is quick to point out that she does this only with permission from the families of the deceased. Some days there is one photo, other days there are three or four.
“It’s a lot of work,” Mitrano says. “I’ve got to get the names and the dates right, I’ll write happy birthday, and I thank the moms and the dads individually. Then, I’ll post all the information and share it with about 20 different groups.”
A Labor of Love
Mitrano discovered the MDDBL Facebook page several years ago and began routinely sharing the page with her network. She had become active in outreach after her son, Michael, died of SUD-related issues on June 22, 2011. “It’s like therapy for Elaine,” say page founders Kris Perry Long and Michele Grealy Waters, who offered Elaine an opportunity to become more involved.
“I remember when my son was trying to go to detox and I didn’t know anything,” Mitrano says. “I was scrambling to find places to take him. This would have been great if I had it then, so I started sharing the list and I kept getting people thanking me. After a while, I wanted to do more, and I thought of making the list in memory of my son.”
Healing Through Helping
Mitrano’s remembrance of her son went so well that other people started asking to have pictures of their deceased loved ones added to the page. “I’ve got a long list right now,” she says. “I started out with 30 or 40 names, now I have hundreds. It helps the moms, and it helps the people who are struggling. That’s my main goal.”
“Until I started getting involved in helping others, the first six years were horrible,” Mitrano says. “I cried every day. I couldn’t say my son’s name without breaking down. But since then, it’s kept me so busy that I almost feel like I’m back to myself again. This list gets me out of bed every morning. I do it for Michael and I do it for other moms out there and family members that are struggling.”
Mitrano also finds community and solace in her grief journey by working with groups such as Team Sharing and by volunteering with Hope for Boston’s Homeless.
Kindred Spirits
The MDDBL founders, Kris Perry Long and Michele Grealy Waters, met through Magnolia New Beginnings, an organization which advocates for those affected by SUD along with their families and loved ones. Together, they found community in their similar struggles as well as through helping others.
Long founded the Facebook page Zero Boundaries Addiction Support & Guidance, which Waters administered. “We would help all kinds of people,” Long says. “Michele and I have maintained what we have been doing all along. We get random phone calls from people who say, ‘I got your number from so-and-so,’ and we say, ‘What do you need?’”
MDDBL started in 2015 as an ever-changing list of resources curated by Long and Waters, which they updated and posted across numerous social media pages with similar themes. In 2017, they launched the MDDBL Facebook page which they continue to administer.
Ongoing Outreach
“I get messages on the page all the time,” Waters says. “Do you have any beds available? Where’s the list? I’ll send the list, but I’ll take the extra step to make sure it is updated. And I’ll ask a few questions, like, ‘Is it dual diagnosis?’ Because we are noticing that a lot of substance use is mental health-driven.”
Making this distinction helps Long and Waters to accurately connect people with recovery centers which are prepared to manage a substance use situation versus a person with a dual diagnosis. “Another reason for this page,” Waters continues, “Is because many of these struggling kids have only state insurance or no insurance. They don’t have these nice policies or private insurance.” Through MDDBL, people seeking recovery can circumvent the process of contacting MABHA themselves or trying to navigate the website in order to find services.
“There’s a very small window when someone is looking for help,” says Waters, who lost both her niece and her brother-in-law to SUD. “They call three detoxes and there are no beds, they’ve got the shakes, and they need their next fix. Sometimes they come back to get a bed and other times they get lost for another week.”
Learning Along the Way
Long and Waters endorse the importance of self-care when helping others, explaining that the days of being glued to their phones 24 hours a day are over. “We’ve both come a long way,” Long says, whose two eldest children are in long-term recovery.
“When we first started this,” Long continues, “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and there weren’t people like us. We used to drive all over Massachusetts picking these kids up and driving them to detox, totally clueless as to who is getting in our car. You look back and it’s crazy what we’ve done. Now it’s more about healthy boundaries, self-care, lots of support, lots of, ‘We’ve been there, we understand where you are, you’ll get through this.’ We still go the extra mile, and we still do the follow ups.”
“We work well together,” Mtrano says. “If someone calls in, Michele and Kris are there.”