agillooly@observer-reporter.com
One woman in recovery for cocaine addiction was awarded a $1,700 court settlement.
So she headed straight to a local crack house.
"She went in and came out with nothing," said Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director at Gateway Rehabilitation Center of Green Tree. "Most people will go in and spend all the money they have."
And while the image of the crack deal is linked to the street corner, the crack house is where addicts know they can get high for the most reasonable price, he said.
"If you want doughnuts, you go to the doughnut shop. If you want a hamburger, you go to McDonald's," Capretto said. "If you want cocaine, you go to the crack house."
There may be a misconception that only low-lifes spend time in these vacant houses, but he's known people in recovery who defy that stereotype.
Some patients at Gateway - highly educated, professionally employed people - have confessed to spending time in crack houses. After all, they can't exactly go home to their middle-class houses and smoke the rocks they bought.
"Where are you going to use?" Capretto said. "So you go into a crack house. Most people who have a coke addiction spend time in a crack house."
And with rocks of crack going for as little as $10, he said, people go into them and stay for days.
Usually, main drug dealers reside in these houses, and they prey on areas of town they think "nobody cares about," Capretto said.
And once the dealers have a person started on crack or heroin, they're hooked.
"Once you get addicted, it hijacks your brain," he said.
Capretto said all animals have a section of the mid-brain (in humans it's the size of a walnut) that houses the drive center, including the so-called survival instinct.
In studies, animals are given toys and other pleasures when they pull certain levers. In these trials, the animals always stopped pulling the levers to get water and nourishment.
But when those levers send heroin or cocaine into the animals' systems, they pulled them to the point of death.
The drugs "literally override the survival instinct," Capretto said.