Grant to Help Baltimore Addicts' Recovery (AP)

BALTIMORE - The city will use a $1 million grant to provide holistic services for drug addicts, including 12-step meetings, acupuncture and tai chi, while they wait for a slot in drug treatment centers.

The city's publicly funded programs treat about 20,000 people a year at a cost of about $52 million. But many programs have waiting lists that can be months long.

Officials with the new initiative, called Threshold to Recovery, said it was better to use the $1 million to offer services short of full treatment to hundreds of addicts, rather than using the money to create a smaller number of regular treatment slots.

"They've made a first step to come and seek help, and just because we don't have a slot, we don't want to send them out into the community without a resource," said Adam Brickner, the president of Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems.

The program will be overseen by the city but funding will come from a $500,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and four Baltimore-based private foundations.