‘It broke my heart’: Overdoses prompt new recovery effort in Beaufort. How it’s different
Mercy Me Living Sober, a new medically-assisted recovery home in Beaufort, recently opened its doors to help addicted women after its founder lost friends to drug overdoes.
“It kind of broke my heart,” James Fordham said of friends who died from opioid addiction.
From 1999–2019, nearly 500,000 people died from an overdose involving an opioid, including prescription and illicit opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Use of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administation says is 50-100 times stronger than morphine, is “dropping people like flies” nationally including the Lowcountry, Fordham said.
“It’s a much bigger problem,” Fordham said, “than most people realize.”
Mercy Me is not a drug and alcohol treatment center, Fordham said. It provides housing for clients who are under the supervision of a doctor. It is first facility that will offer this kind of service in the area, Fordham said. People will be helped under the care of a physician and monitored with regular testing.
The biggest difference between the new recovery home at 116 Elliot St., which will help women with drug and alcohol addictions, and existing homes is Mercy Me accepts people who are taking medication, such as methadone, a drug used to treat opioid addiction, Fordham said.
“We’re just trying to keep them alive until they can find an answer to their problem,” said Fordham. “But the mentality in most AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) groups is a drug is a drug and if you are taking that you are not clean and sober.”
Otherwise, the structure is similar to other recovery homes, with clients working, paying rent and doing chores.
The not-for-profit also has plans to open a home for men in the near future, Fordham said.
Addicts and alcoholics, Fordham said, need more than just a place to get sober. They need to stay sober.
“We provide long-term care,” Fordham said, “and the chance for freedom from the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction.”
Mercy Me offers a medically approved treatment program, appropriate medication and use of the effective 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous that Fordham says leads to higher recovery rates.
The not-for-profit and a step-child of another group founded by Fordham, which also offers help at two men’s recovery homes and a women’s recovery home in the area called Low Country Hope House, which opened in 2016.
But in mid-March, Fordham resigned as the president of the Low Country Hope House to work with a doctor and other friends to establish the sober women’s home in Beaufort.
One reason he left, he said, is “we were having to turn people away because of certain medications that were prescribed by a doctor.”
“The ultimate goal,” Fordham said, “is complete abstinence where they don’t need any of that stuff.”
Call Fordham at 843-263-2520 or Gina at 843-941-9391 or visit www.mercymesober.org for more information.
This story was originally published July 18, 2022 at 4:55 AM.
