It is a sad day for the recovery community with Mercy Hospital’s decision to close the Mercy Recovery Center and Mercy Addiction Medicine.

For those of us who worked there – 14 years for me – we know that it is much more than brick and mortar. It is a place of hope and redemption.

It offers a judgment-free zone while people are in the depths of their disease. Over the past 30-plus years, the lives that have been touched by the staff are beyond measure.

I realize that not everyone achieves sobriety; however, everyone deserves the chance to achieve it. Everyone deserves the kindness of a smile, a gentle touch, an encouraging word.

This is what the recovery center offers the community’s most vulnerable citizens, along with expert medical care and outpatient counseling. Assuming these people will find this anywhere else is to assume the moon is made of Swiss cheese.

Where will people seek help? Mercy believes that primary care physicians will take over their care. Interesting, since they are the ones who send their patients to the recovery center for help.

Not all primary care physicians can prescribe Suboxone; they need a waiver, and most don’t want to prescribe it. A primary care physician once told me he didn’t want a bunch of addicts hanging around his waiting room.

I understand that not everyone will feel the same as I do, and that is OK. For those whose lives have been touched as staff members, patients, family members or friends of patients, my heart is breaking along with yours.

I hope you are staffing your emergency room, Mercy; you are going to need it. You will miss the recovery center when it’s gone – we all will.

Nancy Nappi

Jacksonville, Fla.

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