Page 52 - FOP June 2019 Magazine

Mental Health Spotlight
The treatment team at Harborview Recovery Center includes, from left, Program Director Don Pinkston, Medical Director Dr. Michael Baldinger, Addictions Counselor Andrew Rintels and Addictions Counselor Carolyn Wott.
The Treatment
Harborview gets officers on the road to recovery
■ BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
Debility by a thousand cuts drives Chicago Police Officers to seek help from the Harborview Recovery Center at Amita Saint Joseph Hospital on North Lake Shore Drive. The horrific things they see on the job every day becomes commonplace. They stuff it away, but you can only stuff so much before you become sick and tired of being sick and tired.
The overstuffing leads to drinking, to drugging, to extramar- ital pursuits, to behavioral health issues. It becomes more dif- ficult to function at work. The family falls apart. This is addic- tion, a disease that doesn’t follow the rules of most diseases and packs medical and psychiatric complications.
So you come to Harborview, walking in with head down and feeling shame and guilt. And sick. And tired. And not wanting to admit that you need help. Or you come in knowing that you are ready to make a change.
You need to detox and begin treatment at a place where clini- cians know what you are going through as a police officer and an individual. Dealing with addiction – taking the first steps to- ward getting past addiction – starts here, at Harborview. Come in with your guard up, perhaps fearing what will happen to your job and your family, but dig in during a stay, talk about issues that are very difficult and begin to open up and see the human side of yourself. See where you have been and where you want
52 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JUNE 2019
to go.
“Our goal is to allow people to not just have another chapter
in their lives, but close that book and start a new one,” prom- ises Dr. Michael Baldinger, the medical director at Harborview whose lineage dates back to the 1980s, when addiction treat- ment first became more widely available. “We want our clients to be themselves 2.0, to allow them to have a timeout and reset. They can find the ground and springboard to the rest of their lives.”
If you know the reference to the “thousand cuts,” it’s “death by a thousand cuts” — that was a form of torture used in Imperi- al China beginning around the 10th century. Don Pinkston, the program manager at Harborview and a licensed certified social worker (LCSW) and certified alcohol and drug abuse counselor (CADC), uses the analogy to describe what Chicago Police Offi- cers have to endure.
The torture leads them to drinking and drugging. As a result, some of the first responders who come to Harborview are some of the toughest cases Pinkston has seen in the 28 years he has been in the field. Their addiction hopefully has led them here in search of help.
“It’s not one thing that has got them here. It’s often often the result of many things,” he says. “The folks we treat see the cul- ture changing. It’s a challenge every day because what they deal with doesn’t follow logic and is not predictable.”
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