I survived detox in jail and now help others fight addiction (2024)

It’s been more than three years since I detoxed in the Allegheny County Jail.

I’ll never forget what it felt like: I’d lie awake in a cold sweat while experiencing withdrawal from methadone. Waves of nausea washed over me and I vomited often. Pain radiated throughout my body and my hands shook during the worst of it.

I counted the days since I last felt normal: I hadn’t slept through the night in 29 days, and hadn’t been able to keep food down in 31. At one point, I developed COVID-19 and spent two weeks in isolation. There were moments when I thought I was going to die — that I’d never see my children and grandchildren again.

I was 71 years old and had suffered from opioid use disorder for most of my life. I was receiving methadone at a treatment center before I was arrested and taken to the jail in March 2021. Methadone and Suboxone are life-saving medications for people like me, who need them for a condition that’s just as much a disease as diabetes or high blood pressure.

But the jail only offered methadone to pregnant people at the time. Even those with a prescription, like me, were forced to withdraw from opioids. It can be a painful and dangerous experience, even when supervised by health care staff. Somehow, I survived and didn’t relapse after I was released months later.

Drug-free for three years, I’ve dedicated my life to street outreach work: Carrying a backpack full of supplies, I set out every day to the neighborhoods hardest-hit by the opioid overdose epidemic. I’ve helped get many people into treatment and even saved lives.

I do this work because no one should have to endure what I did: It’s a travesty that I wasn’t allowed to continue methadone while incarcerated, which put me at risk for overdose and death after my release.

The jail now offers Suboxone and other buprenorphine products to those without a prescription. It’s continuing methadone for those with a prescription and searching for a provider to start offering it to those without one. I’m sharing my story to help people understand why jails and prisons must provide this care — as long as the justice system keeps criminalizing those who suffer from this disease.

Cycling in and out of the system

I was just 15 when I developed opioid use disorder.

I grew up in Detroit with four siblings, one of whom sold opioids for a living. I dipped into my older brother’s stash one day and was hooked: I used heroin and cocaine, on and off, for the next five decades and dealt the drugs to support my addiction.

Like so many others with this disease, I cycled in and out of jails and prisons, starting with a 13-year stint in Michigan State Prison before my parole supervision was transferred to Pennsylvania. It was a chance to be closer to my father, who had moved back to his native Pittsburgh. But even he couldn’t keep me from relapsing. I began using and selling again, and kept landing in the Allegheny County Jail on theft- and drug-related charges.

I was in denial for years before I realized I needed help and started methadone treatment later in life. I was committed to my recovery and showed up every day for 75 milligrams at a treatment center in the Strip District.

I was stable and holding down a job when my probation officer accused me of using marijuana, which I deny. I was arrested and jailed until a judge finally reviewed the evidence.

Three hellish months in jail

I spent three hellish months in the jail before I was released.

I told intake staff that I needed to continue methadone and pleaded with them to call my doctor at the treatment center. I was terrified when they informed me I couldn’t get methadone in the jail and braced myself for withdrawal.

But nothing could prepare me for the pain and illness that followed sudden withdrawal from methadone, which is an opioid. I lost more than 30 pounds in the jail and sank into a depression, especially while in isolation with COVID-19. Being in my 70s, I feared I wouldn’t survive the double whammy of the virus and detoxification.

Legal aid lawyers from the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project and the Abolitionist Law Center got wind of my plight. They wrote a letter to then-Warden Orlando Harper urging the jail to immediately continue my methadone prescription. They argued the jail was violating the Americans With Disabilities Act [ADA], which protects people in recovery from opioid use disorder.

Despite the lawyers’ efforts, the jail didn’t give me methadone at any point during my incarceration. I was released in June 2021 and have been abstinent ever since. I found housing, went back to work and joined Narcotics Anonymous. I celebrated three years of abstinence in March and don’t even need to take methadone at this point.

I’m where I am today in spite of my experience in the jail, not because of it.

A PublicSource reporter asked a jail official last month why my methadone treatment wasn’t continued. The official said she can’t comment on individual cases like mine, but noted the jail started continuing methadone through a licensed provider in October 2022 — more than a year after I was held there.

Street outreach to save lives

I felt the jail had discriminated against me and I may be right, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice by a person who was cut off from methadone in the jail — just like I was.

The Justice Department investigated the complaint and reached an agreement with the county to offer medications for opioid use disorder to all in the jail who would benefit. While I’m happy the jail is now offering this life-saving treatment to more people, I’m troubled by the late-night wake-up calls people endure to take their medication. That can’t be good for anyone in recovery and must change as soon as possible.

Thinking about people suffering from addiction in the jail fills me with sadness. I want them to know there’s hope: I recovered and they can, too.

I carry that message of hope on the streets of Pittsburgh every day. I’m an outreach worker for Central Outreach Wellness Center, which provides clinical care and street medicine to people with opioid use disorder. I travel all over the city to reach those most affected by the overdose epidemic, including people of color in highly policed neighborhoods like the Hill District.

My backpack is full of harm-reduction supplies: fentanyl test strips, NARCAN to reverse overdoses, condoms and pamphlets for those in search of treatment. I’ve saved a dozen lives by spotting an overdose in time, calling an ambulance and administering NARCAN.

I see addiction and death on the streets of our city all the time. Too many of those affected spend their lives cycling in and out of the Allegheny County Jail like I did. Better treatment in the jail and follow-through after they’re released could help them break that cycle — without going through what I did.

Jerome Maynor is a street outreach worker for Central Outreach Wellness Center. He can be reached at jeromemaynor036@gmail.com.

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @venuris.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.