PORTLAND — As treatment centers close and public gatherings are prohibited to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Oregon’s recovering addicts are navigating an increasingly difficult path of sobriety.

Recovery is, for many people, a social endeavor, said Mike Marshall, the executive director of Oregon Recovers.

“From the very beginning,” he said, “it’s all built around being in community and supporting each other.”

According to Marshall, before coronavirus, the state was already at a crisis point in terms of addiction.

“Oregon has the third-highest addiction rate in the country,” he said, “and we’re now 47th in access to treatment according to (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration).”

Social distancing means treatment centers are forced to close, he said, and group meetings have been shut down.

“When I found out my mom died, I had just celebrated one year clean and sober,” said Tera Hurst, who is 23 years sober. “The first place I went was to a meeting where everyone lined around the room to give me a hug and their number.”

“I survived because I had those rooms and people to support me,” added Hurst, a candidate for Portland City Council. “I am not sure if I could have stayed clean during that time without seeing and being with my community.”

Other elements of people’s recovery, things like yoga and one-on-one counseling, are also no longer available.

“You can do counseling on Skype,” Marshall said, “but it’s just not the same thing.”

“We had a crisis already,” he said. “Now what limited infrastructure we have is quickly evaporating.”

More groups are moving meetings online. Marshall’s own group is planning their meeting next week online. And on Monday a new site — OregonRecoveryNetwork.org — is expected to go live.

The problem with relying on the internet as opposed to in-person meetings is that many addicts will fall through the now-widened cracks, Marshall said.

Older people and lower-income or no-income people who don’t have access to technology, along with non-English speakers and people in rural communities, will have a harder time finding the resources they need.

Oregon Recovers has an extensive list of online meetings for people who need to get plugged into a group.

And there are two hotlines — Lines for Life at 1-800-273-8255, and Oregon Warmline at 1-800-698-2392.

For a lucky few, social isolation is happening as a group. One group of 16 men at the Blanchet House Farm in Carlton are weathering the shutdown in relatively good spirits.

“We’re lucky,” said Bill Gilmer, 59, who has been in recovery for alcohol abuse off and on since 2016. “For me to stay sober, I need my meetings and I need my faith. Those two together have done for me what I could not do for myself.”

Gilmer acknowledges people living outside a community like this and trying to get sober aren’t so lucky.

Ross Sears, 53, the manager of the farm, who has been sober since 2008, agrees.

As meetings shut down, Sears said his biggest fear for someone newly in recovery was they couldn’t find the help they needed. And without access to meetings, their new routine could be upended.

“For me,” Sears said, “it would have been right back to the other routine I had: drinking.”

Sears said the lack of help and the new pressure of the pandemic would be hard on people in recovery.

“Alcoholics and addicts drink or use for reasons,” he said. “We try to justify stuff.”

“With all this stuff going haywire,” Sears added, “they can kind of talk themselves into, ‘Hey, what the heck?’”

Marshall pointed out that these vulnerable people will also now have more access to alcohol. On Thursday, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission relaxed rules to help the hospitality industry to allow for curbside pickup of malt beverages, wine and cider, as well as extending the hours of same-day alcohol delivery to 2:30 a.m.

While acknowledging that this might help the economy, Marshall called it a “terrible, terrible” idea.

He suspects it will result in an uptick in people starting to use again in their recovery as well as an increase in hospital visits and an increase in arrests, noting now is the time when it should be a public safety priority to limit the number of hospital visits and people confined together in jails.

“They are loosening the barriers we have in place,” he said, “to people acquiring it who shouldn’t.”