POTSDAM -- Effective today, Canton Potsdam Hospital’s Outpatient Chemical Dependency Program will begin seeing patients at their new location, 12 Elm St., Potsdam.

The program has moved from 38½ Main Street, Norwood.

The addiction counseling and recovery service will be accessible at street level of the building. All patients should use the main Elm Street entrance. Parking is at the rear of the building accessible from Munson Street, according to a press release from St. Lawrence Health System.

This clinic will continue to provide initial evaluations, impaired driver assessments, brief interventions, referrals, counseling (for individuals, groups, families, and counseling for gambling addiction), canine-assisted therapy, and continuing care to those suffering from a chemical dependency. The chemical dependency service includes treatment for prescription drugs, street drugs, inhalants, and alcohol abused alone or in combination.

“Canton-Potsdam Hospital views addiction as a primary, progressive, but treatable disease that affects not only the individuals who are chemically dependent, but also their families, friends, and the communities in which they live,” said Adam Bullock, Director of Chemical Dependency, Detox, and Rehabilitation. “As with other illnesses, addiction requires specialized and individualized intervention and treatment.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), prescription opioids continue to be involved in more overdose deaths than any other drug, and all the numbers are likely to underestimate the true burden given the large proportion of overdose deaths where the type of drug is not listed on the death certificate. The findings show that two distinct but interconnected trends are driving America’s opioid overdose epidemic: a 15-year increase in deaths from prescription opioid overdoses, and a recent surge in illicit opioid overdoses driven mainly by heroin and illegally-made fentanyl. Both of these trends continued in 2015.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, use of opiates during pregnancy can result in a drug withdrawal syndrome in newborns called neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). A new study to determine the extent, context, and costs of NAS found that incidence of NAS is rising in the United States. There was a five-fold increase in the proportion of babies born with NAS from 2000 to 2012, when an estimated 21,732 infants were born with NAS —equivalent to one baby suffering from opiate withdrawal born every 25 minutes.

The Potsdam Outpatient Chemical Dependency Program is open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Fridays 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

For more information and to make an appointment, interested individuals may visit https://www.cphospital.org/health-services/rehabilitation-addictions.