Heroin addicts and their families Thursday sad there are not enough beds in treatment facilities. Speaker after speaker shared that point at a State House meeting of the Massachusetts heroin task force.
“I’m getting a lot of messages and it’s horrible,” said William Pfaff, who founded the group Heroin is Killing My Town.
Pfaff read one of those messages to the panel: “We could not find that bed. We called and asked around. But we don’t need the bed anymore. They died."
Jenna Cochrane told a similar story. She says in November her nephew Michael told her he was a heroin addict and asked for her help. She put together a list of all the treatment facilities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire:
“I picked him up a morning or two later. He sat in my car withdrawing. Called every facility on the sheet of paper in the McDonald's parking lot in the passenger side. Every single one of them said no beds, no beds, no beds.”
Michael was dead by January.
State police report more than 200 suspected heroin overdose deaths so far this year, and that doesn't even include Massachusetts' three largest cities.
