For three decades, Moretown resident Carl Yalicki has worked in addiction-related fields in Vermont. He talked to The Valley Reporter about his work, what he’s learned in the process, and how he sees local, community-oriented programs as one of the strongest solutions to alleviating widespread addiction.
Yalicki came to Vermont almost 50 years ago, when he and his then-wife loaded up their station wagon and drove from Jersey City, New Jersey, where Yalicki grew up.
Many of his friends had died from overdose and he himself was in recovery. The two were looking for a fresh start.
For the first 20 years or so, he was based in various state departments focused on human services. In 1990, he moved to Moretown with his wife Cary Friberg, then began working as a probation and parole officer for the Vermont Department of Corrections a few years later.
ALTERNATIVES TO JAIL
Yalicki continued that work for 15 years, based in the state’s Intensive Substance Abuse Program (ISAP) – one that assigned treatment plans to those arrested for crimes involving illicit substances until the state discontinued it in 2018. He said that working in corrections was challenging work, seeing the same people cycle through the criminal justice system.
He was also involved with Vermont drug courts – established in response to the cycle of incarceration associated with substance use. Yalicki was part of a team – including judges, prosecutors, public defenders, health care workers, counselors, and others – who ordered treatment and supervision instead of prison sentences.
When Yalicki started working in corrections in the mid 1990s, opioids were flooding the illicit drug market and overdose deaths were doubling across the United States – what public health officials refer to as the “first wave” of the addiction crisis. Since then, Yalicki said that what’s changed is “the depths that addiction has gotten to.”
“As drugs got stronger and more powerful, I can’t help but think that dependence also got more powerful too. A lot of my friends died from overdoses over the years,” he said, “but nothing like this. This is unlike anything I – even in my worst, scared-straight nightmares, could ever envision.”
It upsets Yalicki to hear people asking why those struggling with substance use can’t just stop using, since it’s now widely known that chronic addiction alters a person’s neural functioning, often irreparably.
CONJURING EMPATHY
Around 2000, while Yalicki was still working in corrections, he decided to get licensed as a drug and alcohol counselor. He knew it wasn’t lucrative work, but he wanted to give back.
He took required courses taught by local agencies, passed written exams, completed apprenticeships and did about 6,000 hours of clinical work. He finished about three years later, as he was doing casework at the now defunct Dale Women’s Correctional Facility in Waterbury – “an eye opener of an experience for me,” he said, seeing how trauma played a vast role in the lives of those women.
“People have been to hell and back,” he said. “It doesn’t make you a bleeding heart, but it does remind you that you should try to conjure up some empathy – some way, somehow.”
While working as a counselor, Yalicki found that he missed being on the ground as a probation and parole officer, so he did both. Counseling functioned more as an adjunct – seeing a handful of clients in the evenings after his workday in corrections was over.
When Yalicki’s wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, he transitioned to doing more counseling. He rented a space in Waterbury – accessed through an alleyway between a liquor store and a funeral home. He practiced there until last summer, when he moved to a shared office space on Main Street in Waterbury.
STRONG SOLUTIONS
Yalicki said that the addiction treatment landscape is always changing, and that access to care has expanded in Vermont over the past decades – yet, it still needs work.
He sees Peer Support – in which people with lived experience of addiction and mental health issues provide support for others with similar conditions – as one of the most powerful interventions. He also sees the role of community-scale programs as “the strongest solution to all of this.”
He pointed to places like Jenna’s Promise – a residential treatment center for women in Johnson, Vermont, where Yalicki offers a support group for family members and loved ones of those who struggle with addiction or died from overdose. The center offers cooking classes, yoga, gym access, day care services and other social supports.
“Treatment can mean so many different things,” he said. “There should be more of this in every little Vermont town.”
He also pointed to some specific interventions that can be helpful. He recalled facilitating a treatment group at Burlington Probation and Parole years ago, where another counselor offered an ear acupuncture protocol that was popularized for addiction in the United States circa 1974. With the ear needles, “I immediately felt calm, relaxed, and very, very mellow. My colleague later described me as looking like one of those wildly moving inflatable figures they sometimes have in front of car dealerships, that had its plug pulled.”
A few other things that helped Yalicki in his long-term recovery include support from family members, being outdoors and spending time with his dog Sonny – “my best friend in the world these days.”
“We need to be treating addiction like a health condition,” he said in summary, “and throwing everything we possibly can at it.
