THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS | BY CHRISTINE VESTAL | 07.23.16
PORTLAND, Maine — When Clifton Hilton decided to quit drinking this month, he called a residential drug and alcohol detoxification center in this coastal Maine city on a Friday afternoon and was told a bed was available for him. But by the time he arrived on a bus from Bangor the next morning, the bed had been taken.
“I just walked the streets for five days,” Hilton said. It wasn’t until Wednesday that the Portland detox facility, the Milestone Foundation, had an open bed for him.
Hilton, 70, is more fortunate than most of Maine’s growing number of low-income seniors with a drug or alcohol abuse problem. He was able to find help for his alcohol addiction and said he expects to secure a spot at Milestone’s sober housing facility in Old Orchard Beach once he gets “straightened out.”