Category Archives: Addiction Recovery

When Methadone Clients Get Stuck

Posted on March 26, 2013 | Comments Off on When Methadone Clients Get Stuck

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Clients across the country in methadone clinics and suboxone treatment programs are required to receive counseling while taking methadone or suboxone medication. Opioid replacement therapy specifically treats the painful opiate withdrawal, but counseling addresses the thinking, behaviors, and lifestyle that fed the addiction or that made individuals more vulnerable to developing addiction-related problems.

While in early recovery from opioid addiction, individuals begin to look at themselves and their lives through the process of counseling. It is during this time that clients face the truth about themselves and the effects that their addiction may have had on family and friends, finances, personal reputation, employment, and a host of other real world considerations.

It is easy to understand how some people can feel overwhelmed as they take their first sober look at the consequences of their recent addiction-based lives. However, change does occur … and change is a choice. A very personal and deliberate choice.

Many addicted individuals come to understand that one must face recovery one step at a time. No matter how much one wants to erase or repair past damage, there is only so much that he or she can do on any given day to start anew. What is required in this early phase of recovery is the simple desire to stay drug free and to try and make better decisions one-by-one with each new day. This sounds simplistic, but is a profound & powerful personal philosophy that leads the recovering person down a road to success. ACTION is a must. Action … is not optional.

Many suffering addicts are tired from fighting their addiction, but they also have an innate desire to move forward and to address their addiction problem. So many people become stuck in an active opioid addiction, spinning round and round, sometimes for years. They wonder if things will ever change. As the addiction becomes a familiar foe, addicts grow weary of the fight and settle for feeding the monster just to get through the day.

If you are opioid addicted, you do not have to be "stuck" in this addiction. You do not have to settle for a life of perpetual worry. It is important that you take action. You must take action. You must not wait for someone to come along and drop a miracle at your doorstep. Get into treatment immediately. Connect yourself with an addiction counseling center or detox or inpatient rehab. There is hope there. There are answers. There is support. There is real recovery going on everyday all over this country, and it is happening to people just like you. Believe that … because it is true! There are recovering people who have made the journey. There are treatment professionals with decades of experience. They have a clear road map and can offer you a new direction.

You can become unstuck! Methadone or suboxone treatment may be a part of the new solution for you. Or perhaps a medically supervised detox where they ease your withdrawal symptoms using safe medications. And you then follow that up with admission to an intensive outpatient counseling program (IOP) to learn the new coping tools you'll need in order to avoid relapse.

Maybe your first step is to go to a 12 Step meeting and ask for help, or a friend, or a pastor, or walk into the local mental health clinic and ask for a referral. Being "stuck" is a result of inaction, or taking the wrong action over and over. If you're serious about a new life and finally facing this opioid addiction, take the right action for yourself. So much is possible. You can do this. It can be done.

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Posted in Addiction Counseling, Addiction Recovery, Drug Treatment, Medication Assisted Treatment, Methadone, Methadone Clinics, Methadone Maintenance, Methadone Programs, Methadone Success, Methadone Treatment, Opiate Addiction, Opiate Treatment, Recovery, Relapse Prevention

Time Limits on Methadone Programs

Posted on February 9, 2013 | Comments Off on Time Limits on Methadone Programs

methadone-servicesThere is growing interest from a number of entities in regard to America’s opioid addiction problem, methadone treatment, suboxone treatment, and the always important funding considerations that accompany these subjects.

This interest is coming from hospitals & the larger medical establishment across the country, your local community, the Federal government’s Medicaid services division, your State’s Division of Health and Human Services who allocate state dollars for opioid treatment, private insurance companies, employers, and the list goes on and on.

The nationwide costs and consequences of addiction are enormous. The cost of treating addiction is also very large. However, research has proven repeatedly that addiction treatment produces undeniable cost benefits. In other words, treating addiction saves money in the long run by helping addicted individuals arrest their disease and become functional again. For many of the entities listed above, it’s all about the dollars. And more specifically, saving dollars when it comes to treating addiction.

The U.S. economy has been hit hard and we have a growing number of people depending on entitlements and public assistance. This, of course, creates a scenario in which more and more people are relying on a “government pie” whose slices keep getting cut smaller and smaller. The recent reductions in funding for public addiction programs have caused some agencies to close their doors … while other agencies simply had to cut back on the services they are able to offer their addicted clients.

An important consideration, which may become a hot topic soon, is how much counseling a methadone or suboxone patient can receive. Or, how long he or she can remain on their opioid replacement medication before public assistance funding begins to stop. Medicaid and State dollars presently help to fund the treatment for many opioid addicted clients in programs. There are currently more people in need of opioid treatment than there are funds available to pay for that treatment. So inevitably, patients may find themselves needing to help pay for their treatment.

I would not like to see patients be pressured to taper off of methadone before they are ready. Experience has shown us that gradual tapering, initiated & paced by the client, is the most successful means of coming off of methadone or suboxone successfully. Government public assistance is becoming more like private “Managed Care Organizations” with every passing day. As this paradigm continues to evolve, we may possibly see time limits of some sort imposed on methadone & suboxone maintenance clients. Some may view this as reasonable and necessary since such limits and caps are already applied to recipients of other health care services.

If time limits are ever applied to one’s length of time on methadone or suboxone, we will likely see clients increasingly picking up the funding for their opioid treatment. This happens everyday around the country in private, self-pay methadone clinics. In the end, we know that opioid replacement therapy works. It’s been proven! The availability of Medicaid and State funding is a great benefit to many people across the country. How this might change in the years ahead will bear close observation.

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Posted in Addiction Recovery, Drug Rehab Programs, Drug Treatment, Methadone, Methadone Blog, Methadone Clinics, Methadone Cost, Methadone Maintenance, Methadone Programs, Methadone Taper, Methadone Treatment, Opiate Treatment, Recovery, Suboxone, Suboxone Clinics

Anti-Methadone Sentiment Not Rooted in Reality

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Comments Off on Anti-Methadone Sentiment Not Rooted in Reality

methadone52In browsing articles on current methadone treatment, I came across a brief one in the United Kingdom’s Daily Record specifically from the Scottish news section. The article contained a number of derogatory quotes (in regard to methadone) from Scotland’s Maxie Richards. Ms. Richards runs a foundation for addicted people in recovery.

One quote from Ms. Richards pertaining to methadone included: “To me it represents a hopeless road, a road to nowhere.” Another comment was “I think it is such a waste to let young people spend years on methadone because we don’t think there’s any hope for them.” Ms. Richards is openly critical of the government’s support of methadone treatment programs.

Her words “a hopeless road” are not a fitting description of the life enhancing benefits of methadone in treating addiction. To the contrary, methadone is often the single most beneficial intervention for someone struggling with opioid addiction. In my experience, any addiction professional who is categorically against methadone is revealing a lack of education on evidence-based treatments, and is merely expressing an unsubstantiated personal bias that is easily refuted.

Today, a former client made a surprise visit to our clinic. She had been in methadone treatment with our agency for a little over 4 years and had come off of methadone one year ago. Today, standing in our lobby, she was full of life, smiling, and enthusiastically talking about how well things were going in her life. She said that methadone had been instrumental in saving her life. Since leaving treatment, she had remained completely drug free, was full-time employed, enjoying positive relationships with her family. And she looked wonderful, very healthy, and had a beautiful complexion.

Was her methadone treatment a “hopeless road’? Absolutely not! She, and we, knew that it was a bridge to a better life. She had originally arrived at our clinic beat down, lost in addiction, hopeless, and desperate for an answer after having tried everything she knew of to get clean and sober. Choosing methadone and counseling worked for her. I wonder what Ms. Richards might think if she had the chance to see and to speak with our former client today? Results speak for themselves. Methadone programs save lives and provide a deeply desired new opportunity. True, not all methadone programs are the same. Some are better than others.

Hope … is what many addicted people find when they begin dosing with methadone. Relief … from painful opioid withdrawal symptoms is what they feel. Gratitude … is what they express for a new start in life. And eventually happiness. Which is what our former client had come to share with us on this day.

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Posted in Addiction Recovery, Medication Assisted Treatment, Methadone, Methadone Benefits, Methadone Clinics, Methadone Maintenance, Methadone Safety, Methadone Success, Methadone Treatment, NIMBY, Opiate Treatment, Recovery

Opioid Craving Similar to Food Hunger

Posted on June 10, 2012 | Comments Off on Opioid Craving Similar to Food Hunger

Clients tell me that their loved one does not understand why stopping opiate use is so hard. Most non-users think that it is simply a matter of "willpower". While determination is very important in overcoming active addiction, "willpower" alone is usually not enough to overcome one's physical opioid dependence once it has taken hold.

There is a page here on Methadone.US that is dedicated to explaining opioid addiction and the overwhelming compulsion that addicted people feel to keep using these drugs. If you are suffering with an opioid addiction, I recommend that you have your family or friends read this page. It helps to explain (using easily relatable examples) how and why addicted people have such a hard time avoiding opioid use when their withdrawal symptoms and cravings begin to build.

Opioid addicted people are no more able to "just not use" than most people are able to "just not eat". The need to satisfy hunger and the need to avoid opioid withdrawal are similar physiological drives. Both are powerful needs that a person cannot ignore.

Opioid addiction causes profound biochemical changes in the brain. The potential for becoming addicted is always present. Thus, this risk of addiction is something that all physicians should discuss with their patients when they prescribe them opiates for whatever reason.

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Posted in Addiction Recovery, Drug Treatment, Methadone, Methadone Programs, Opiate Addiction, Opiate Detox, Opiate Withdrawal

Doctors and Methadone

Posted on May 4, 2012 | Comments Off on Doctors and Methadone

factsHow doctors view methadone is becoming a hot topic. A friend recently informed me that the TV celebrity doctor, commonly known as Dr. Drew, was against methadone and had publicly made negative comments about the medication. I was disappointed to learn of this because Dr. Drew has a fairly large national audience who follow his opinion on medical matters. I then noticed that Dr. Jana Burson (a well-educated and experienced opioid addiction professional) had written on this topic, and herself questioned why Dr. Drew had made derogatory comments in regard to methadone. Dr. Burson knows firsthand how incredibly beneficial methadone is to those suffering with chronic opioid dependency. If a physician deserves a national audience & voice on this topic, it is Dr. Jana Burson, not Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Physicians typically seem to fall into one of two camps: either those who are educated on addiction and modern addiction treatment approaches, or those who are not. This may seem like a simplistic analysis, but is surprisingly accurate. Sadly, in my experience, physician critics of opioid replacement therapies often jump to conclusions that stem from personal bias or opinion based on very limited exposure to methadone and its benefit to the recovering community. Methadone is not “alternative medicine”, or some unproven sideline drug that one must obtain via the black market in a third world country.

Methadone is the leading medically-approved pharmaceutical treatment intervention for opioid addiction in the United States. There is no medical “speculation” on methadone’s success in the treatment of opioid addiction. It is a proven method of saving lives and restoring quality of life for a large subset of those who are addicted to opioids. These are not hyped opinions, but are medical facts that are beyond dispute. That any “physician” would reject methadone as a legitimate treatment for opioid addiction … is professionally irresponsible, and suggestive of medical incompetence in the area of treating drug addiction.

Methadone has been in widespread use in America for over 40 years. The number of addicted individuals whose lives have been saved and/or improved (through the medically supervised use of methadone) is well documented. SAMHSA (the United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) publish evidenced-based Treatment Intervention Protocols (known as TIPS manuals) that are available to treatment centers all across America. They have several such manuals, published and widely distributed, that are specifically dedicated to treating opioid addiction with methadone and buprenorphine (suboxone). SAMHSA also maintain a U.S. government website listing all of the methadone clinics in the USA and U.S. physicians approved to dispense buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid addiction. Why do they list these? So that suffering people can find help for their addictive disorder.

Perhaps Dr. Drew should interview actual patients in methadone treatment programs. Then interview the staff of professionals (including dedicated, knowledgeable physicians) that work in these facilities. Then interview the families of methadone patients that regained their sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers. Then read the evidenced-based literature & research available (through SAMHSA) on the beneficial use of methadone in treating opioid addiction.

That might require Dr. Drew to walk off of the TV production set, out of the celebrity limelight … and into the everyday real world. It’s a place where people like Dr. Jana Burson work for many years, with thousands of opioid addicted people, using medical interventions that are proven and effective. Dr. Drew would do well to have a sit down conversation with professionals like Dr. Jana Burson. This might allow him to replace negative personal bias … with medical fact. Only then, would he be equipped to speak to the public about methadone and opioid addiction. Until then, he is just part of the TV & celebrity noise … where drama, ratings and sensationalism … are cherished over the truth.

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Posted in Addiction Counseling, Addiction Recovery, Drug Rehab Programs, Drug Treatment, Medication Assisted Treatment, Methadone, Methadone Benefits, Methadone Programs, Methadone Success, Methadone Treatment, Opiate Addiction, Opiate Treatment, Recovery, Suboxone