About $410,000 is heading to Butler County to build a way for recovering opioid addicts looking for a route back to a healthy life.

Butler County's Center for Community Resources is the recipient of one of 16 new grants aimed at providing housing assistance and other support for addicts in recovery programs. It's federal money coming from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Butler's grant is a chunk of about $15 million being distributed in similar programs throughout the state.

Butler's money has a lot of planned uses, according to Sandra Curry, who wrote the grant application. Curry serves as community partnership manager with Butler's Alliance for Nonprofit Resources.

“We have a lot to roll out,” Curry said.

Half the $410,000 goes to housing support and case management. The rest funds several tools and programs for case managers to use to aid their clients' recoveries.

One recovery option that Curry's very excited about is a device that's being tested as an aid for people going through opioid withdrawal. The device is called a Bridge. It looks like a hearing aid, and the user wears it behind their ear with three little wires placed around the ear. The device sends an electrical signal to a part of the brain. The Federal Drug Administration recognizes it as a tool for pain treatment, but further research shows it can help addicts by easing withdrawals, according to Tom McKinley.

McKinley works for Verifiable Recovery Network, a substance abuse treatment group in Lawrence County that's going to be aiding the Butler County case workers. He thinks the Bridge devices are going to be huge, once they're widespread.

“People can be literally writhing in pain,” McKinley said. “They flip this thing on, and within a few hours they're sitting there having a normal conversation.”

Butler County is the only one of the 16 grants with the Bridge devices built into its application.

McKinley thinks Bridge devices will pair well with medical treatments and Hope is Dope programs, which aim to steer addicts back toward healthy sources of endorphins.

“The reason you feel crappy is your body isn't making endorphins anymore,” McKinley said. “And you've created a boatload of new receptors that are empty and screaming at you.”

Not all clients will be outfitted with the Bridge device. What individuals receive will be based on what they need, according to Beth Gillan, regional executive director for Butler CCR.

Gillan said they'll be hiring two case managers with the grant money. Those two will handle up to 20 people each.

From there, case workers will begin building paths forward for each of their clients, using the various programs included in the grant funding.

If that means help with rent, they can provide rent money that gradually decreases for five months until they're self-supporting.

The other half of the grant cash, besides housing and case worker funding, provides for those various tools the case workers will lean on.

Some money will fund programs at Butler County Community College. The 40 people enrolled in this program will take the ongoing Hope is Dope classes being offered through the college.

Tracy Hack, coordinator of community leadership initiatives for BC3, said they'll start groups off by making sure they “learn about what happens to the brain during addiction.”

They'll do cognitive therapy, work skills classes and endorphin building exercises.

Hope is Dope hosts community meetings at the Butler Art Center on the last Monday of each month. This group will be getting additional Art Center classes, in hopes of finding creative outlets for the recovering addicts.

Out-of-county help also is being tapped: Hack said a man named Parker Maynard, a consultant in sustainable agriculture, is likely to be brought in from Youngstown, Ohio, to lead patients in some gardening exercises.

Maynard provided some details about his current work in Youngstown as examples, including an educational component with ecological farming, urban farming and organic gardening. And there's also a larger goal of building vocational skills and communication abilities. He added that he is currently looking for a Butler County location for his work with the program.

“If the recovery process is going to take longer for someone, you'll find out at the farm,” Maynard said.

To be allowed in, participants will have to be in a recognized recovery program.

Participants in the grant-funded programs will likely come from two sources, according to Jim Smith, director of programs for CCR. They'll be referred through Butler's Drug and Alcohol program, and they'll be directed over to case workers after calling CCR's crisis line.

That line gets about 21,000 calls a year, and about 10 percent are related to substance abuse disorder, according to both Smith and Hack.

Their crisis line can be reached at 800-292-3866.

Though CCR just learned it's getting the grant this week, they have little time to waste in getting the program running. The grant period begins April 1, meaning they will start advertising for the two new case workers Monday.

Butler County originally applied for about $800,000 for a one-year grant period to serve 80 people. Before awards being issued, the program shifted to six-month grants, and recipients earned only about half of their original requests, according to Curry. She and others involved with bringing the programs to Butler hope to see the grant funding renewed.