As Matt Sutton sat in the gymnasium where he'd watched countless Charleston children play after school, he felt hopeful that the man coming to speak there Wednesday could offer solutions to one of the biggest problems plaguing the families he saw every day - drug addiction.
"Hopefully, he'll come here and help us point to some solutions that we can implement after he leaves," Sutton said. "One of our main focuses here is after-school care for kids, and we see a lot of kids here who have trouble with substance abuse with their parents, and they need a lot of help. We don't want that cycle to continue."
Sutton is a board member for the East End Family Resource Center - also known as the Roosevelt Center - the site of President Barack Obama's Charleston visit on Wednesday. The president, who came to discuss the Mountain State's and nation's opioid addiction crisis, addressed a crowd of more than 150 stakeholders.
For Sutton, solutions can't come soon enough - of the 205 families served by the center last year, 68 children were living in a shelter, and nine were directly affected by heroin abuse. One of the children who regularly visited the center was even hospitalized for abuse, and the child's parents were found to have abused drugs, Sutton said.
The president's talk focused on removing the stigma attached to substance abuse and treating it like a disease. He stressed the need to address the demand side of the drug abuse problem with prevention and treatment.
Many local politicians who were in attendance said the president's mention of bipartisanship in working to solve the drug problem was a key point in his address. Like Washington, D.C., West Virginia has a Republican-controlled legislature and a Democrat who serves as head of state, but many political leaders across the state have been brought together by the overwhelming surge of drug addiction, including Charleston Mayor Danny Jones, whose son has been arrested more than once on drug-related charges.
"I thought the whole event was just overwhelming," Jones said. "I think he did a great job; I think he gets it. He could have picked a lot of places to go, but he picked Charleston.
"I heard everything I needed to hear; I'm a parent who is in this situation."
Delegate Tim Miley, the minority leader in the House of Delegates, said he also was encouraged by the president's emphasis on working together, and added that he viewed the forum as a conversation that was "just beginning today," and one he hoped "wouldn't end today."
"I'm encouraged that the president is, hopefully, raising awareness of the devastation substance abuse can have for families in West Virginia, both rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, white and black," said Miley, D-Harrison. "To the extent that he can raise awareness and help alleviate the stigma surrounding substance abuse or addictive propensities, that is a tremendous step in the right direction."
One of the larger points of discussion that accompanied Obama's visit was a lack of access to treatment in West Virginia and across the nation. David Grubb, a Charleston parent who discussed his daughter's opioid abuse and recent overdose with the Gazette-Mail last week, asked the president about access to treatment during the forum, noting that his daughter is on her fourth stint in rehab - this time, in Michigan.
"It was a good meeting, and I think it spoke well for the state that we had people, we had parents, discuss this problem," said Dr. Rahul Gupta, state health officer and commissioner for the Bureau for Public Health. "I think it's important, raising awareness, to look at the siege our state is currently under. This is not a political issue - this is a bipartisan issue that affects everyone."
Dr. Patrice Harris, a Bluefield native and chairwoman-elect of the American Medical Association board, traveled from Atlanta to hear the president's remarks in Charleston because her organization, like many others connected to the issue, supports "elevating and amplifying" discussion of drug abuse whenever possible.
"This is a complex problem, and what I liked about today's conversation is that no one said 'This'll fix it. This is the magic bullet,' " she said. "You had law enforcement saying we can't arrest our way out of this . . . it really has to be about the partnership and cooperation between law enforcement and public health."
Secretary Karen Bowling, of the state Department of Health and Human Resources, said the president's visit brought continued awareness to the problem of substance abuse. She said his comments about erasing the stigma attached to substance abuse were thought-provoking.
"We, as a country, have to understand that [addiction] is a disease," Bowling said. "I've said that on many occasions when I've been interviewed, we have to treat this as we do [diseases like] diabetes."
West Virginia has put $25 million into treatment programs under the leadership of Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Bowling said.
"Does that mean we have enough? Absolutely not," she said. "We need more. But we also need to stay on the prevention side and keep talking to our young people about it and make people aware that we have a problem in our state and in our country."
The state also needs more physicians who are certified to do medication-assisted treatment for addictions, Bowling said. They need proper training, she said.
"We don't want to create another problem," Bowling said.
For Charleston resident David Sanders, who attended the president's event, the biggest barrier to getting help for a substance abuse problem was not finding a treatment center, it was battling the stigma attached to his problem, he said.
"I didn't want friends and neighbors to know what I was going through, I didn't want anyone else to know what I was going through," Sanders said.
Sanders, who works for the state Bureau for Behavioral Health and Health Facilities, said he struggled with an addiction for seven years. He was surrounded by people every day who could have helped him, but he resisted.
"I self-medicated with drugs and alcohol to combat depression and anxiety," he said. "Because of stigma, I didn't come forward and say I need help."
Sanders said he would have liked the president to talk about the availability of buprenorphine, a drug that's used to treat opioid addiction. It's one of the only drugs of its kind that has a patient cap - physicians can only have 100 patients on that drug at one time, he said.
"It's a lifesaving drug," he said.
Dr. John Linton, dean of the West Virginia University School of Medicine's Charleston Division, said he was pleased that the focus of the discussion was on building up recovery services and providing resources, something he said his campus is working on implementing.
"We're working on several pillars of intervention, one of which is the current drug abuse crisis that we're facing," Linton said. "Ironically, if this were Ebola, it would be front-page news until it was cured. This ebbs and flows in terms of the public's interest."
Patti Barnabei and Pat Neely came to the event from Weirton, where they are a part of a support group called Never Alone West Virginia. The faith-based nonprofit organization works with addicts and their family members.
Barnabei said she liked Obama's comments, especially his thoughts about battling the problem of addiction with prevention and treatment, rather than incarceration.
Neely, who lost two of her grown children to addiction, said Obama's comments were wonderful but that there are more issues to address that he didn't touch on.
Neely said she wants to see addicts have access to some sort of forgiveness plan, to expunge their felony records. That would have helped her daughter, who was a registered nurse before her license was revoked after she got a felony, she said.
"After that, she felt like she had no hope," Neely said. "She turned to alcohol, and that eventually killed her."
Having their records expunged would help get addicts who are in recovery back on their feet again, she said.
"Because they're labeled and no one wants to hire them, and there's just a lot of issues that need to be addressed," Neely said.
Dr. Joe Shapiro, dean of the Marshall University School of Medicine, said that, "in a sea of positive," he heard something he felt uneasy about - the idea that the government or health care "knows what works" in treating addicts, and needs only to offer more resources in order to solve the problem."
"My overall impression was positive, and I thought it was a very good sign that the president came to West Virginia, because it's very much the epicenter of this crisis, and pledged his support to address it," Shapiro said. "I think one of the problems I had with the discussion was the assumption that we have the knowledge as to what strategies could be implemented to solve the problem. It's not that simple."
According to Shapiro, 12-step recovery programs, which have become increasingly popular over the past few decades, have approximately a 5 percent long-term success rate. Additional clinical research needs to be conducted, Shapiro said, and more strategies need to be identified that could produce better interventions for addicts looking to recover.
"I think more needs to be made of the fact that one size won't fit all, and we have to come up with a menu of options to try to do as much good as we can," he said.
Sam Hickman, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers - West Virginia Chapter, agreed.
"A lot of people I talk to will say, 'You know what works? X works,' because they've seen it work for themselves or somebody they know, and they don't understand that people are in different places in the addiction continuum," he said. "We need a full array, a full continuum of care, in order to meet them wherever they are and support them in recovering successfully."
Delegate Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, said he was honored by the president's visit but is ultimately waiting to see if discussions like Wednesday's translate into change.
"A presidential visit will shine a light on an issue that we've been discussing but, in my opinion, what we need in West Virginia are more beds in long-term recovery centers," Pushkin said. "We heard some about that, but I would've liked to have heard more about that.
"I'm fairly certain that everyone working on this issue has the best intentions. If there's funding available, though, I'd like to get it in the hands of the people who understand the issue and know what they're doing."
Most were very pleased that the president chose to visit Charleston, a city that, as the capital of West Virginia and its largest metropolitan area, has seen myriad problems surrounding opioid abuse. John Temple, a WVU professor and the author of the new book "American Pain," which centers on the rise of opioid abuse, said he was pleased with the president's visit, although he believes his visit was overdue.
"I think he should have been here several years ago," Temple said. "Regardless, I'm glad he's here now."
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @LydiaNuzum on Twitter. Reach Lori Kersey at Lori.Kersey@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1240 or follow @LoriKerseyWV on Twitter.