LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the early 2000s, Michelle Warfield worked at a factory, hauling heavy seats for Ford trucks on and off an assembly line. To suppress daily aches in her back and hips, her doctor prescribed opioid painkillers.
They worked for a bit. But by 2011, Warfield struggled to walk.
And “by that time, I was addicted,” said Warfield, now living in Shelbyville, Kentucky.
After she lost her health insurance, Warfield started buying pills on the street. She tried to quit several times, but the debilitating withdrawal — so bad she couldn’t get out of bed, she said — kept driving her back to drug use.
Until last year.
Through her church, Warfield learned about the NET device. It’s a cellphone-sized pack connected to gel electrodes placed near the ear that deliver low-level electrical pulses to the brain.
“Once I got set up on the device, within 30 minutes, I didn’t have any cravings” for opioids, Warfield said.
After three days on the device in August, she stopped using drugs altogether, she said.
After using the NET device for three days in August, Michelle Warfield says she stopped using or craving drugs.(Aneri Pattani/KFF Health News)
Warfield’s treatment was paid for with her county’s opioid settlement dollars — money from pharmaceutical companies accused of fueling the overdose crisis.
State and local governments nationwide are receiving billions in opioid settlement cash over nearly two decades and are meant to spend it treating and preventing addiction.
Warfield wants them to allot a good chunk to the NET device, which costs counties about $5,500 a p …