Category Archives: Subutex

BrightView Offers Local Addiction Treatment

BrightView provides high quality addiction treatment with a specialty in opioid addiction recovery. Currently, the organization operates in six states: Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Delaware, North Carolina, and Massachusetts.

BrightView was originally founded by a doctor, a lawyer, and a businessman with the intent of transforming addiction medicine. In Cincinnati, opioid addiction had severely impacted the local community as it had done in so many other areas of the country.

Consequently, BrightView founders wanted to design a system of service delivery that would make it easy for people affected by opioid addiction to get the help they needed with minimal obstacles and delays.

While most BrightView clinics specialize in the use of buprenorphine, suboxone, and vivitrol, several clinics also offer methadone. Their recovery model is built upon a combination of top tier medication-assisted treatment in conjunction with counseling and behavioral therapies.

In addition to opioid-specific treatment services, BrightView also offers specialized treatment for alcohol, methamphetamine, and other substance use disorders. Being patient-centered is a hallmark of the company’s approach to helping.

Most BrightView facilities can see a patient within 24 hours of calling for an appointment. If interested in contacting BrightView, you can reach them at 866-928-5995.

Physician Prescribed Medications Only

There are plenty of illegally manufactured medications of unknown origin currently flooding the country. In addition to heroin, methamphetamines, and other highly addictive substances, common prescriptions for managing psychiatric disorders are now accessible on the street as well.

Often these seemingly “legit” meds are manufactured outside of the U.S. where they are not subject to FDA oversight. Some of them are laced with fentanyl as is now occurring with street opiates, cocaine, and ecstasy.

Fentanyl availability is becoming widespread and creating an epidemic of accidental overdoses. News of fentanyl drug busts are being reported with increasing frequency since U.S. law enforcement and border patrol have stepped up their efforts to confiscate this deadly drug before it hits the streets.

It is important to remember that medications provided by methadone clinics and buprenorphine-approved doctors are beneficial drugs that are carefully formulated by pharmaceutical companies operating under FDA guidelines and safety checks. Please, only take medications prescribed by your doctor.

Every OTP (opioid treatment program) clinic and prescribing physician aim to custom fit the medication and dosage that will best treat your opioid use disorder. Self-medicating with drugs obtained on the street is highly dangerous. Your recovery success depends on you believing in your treatment team and relying upon their medical expertise, and their administration of safe, approved medications designed to manage your opioid withdrawal symptoms.

Treating Opioid Addiction

The science of treating opioid addiction has become increasingly popular in both medical circles and in the addiction treatment community.

For decades, medical professionals and even popular recovery organizations did not quite understand how giving an opioid addict a replacement medication could actually facilitate recovery.

Part of the dilemma was that those who defined “recovery” did so using an old school philosophical approach originally crafted for alcoholism. But science has taught us that not all addictions are exactly the same. While there are certainly commonalities between the various substance use disorders, there are very important distinctions and differences which affect the recovery process.

You cannot prescribe a medication that is effective with depression, and expect that same medication to resolve schizophrenia or an anxiety disorder. While they are all mental health disorders that can debilitate a patient, there are critical differences between these disorders and in the overall treatment plan for addressing each one.

Similarly with addiction, science is teaching us that a one-size-fits-all approach to addiction recovery is detrimental and often unproductive.

With opioid addiction in particular, the disease progression is quite unlike most other addictive illnesses. While the medical profession has evolved that understanding, the recovery community and general society has at times struggled to comprehend the necessity of medication-assisted treatment for the opioid addicted.

Physicians, Nurse Practitioners, PA’s, Nurses, and Counselors all play a part in educating patients, their families, the community, and government on the key role that medication plays in the successful management of an opioid use disorder. Methadone, subutex, suboxone, vivitrol, and other medication choices make the difference between recovery success and repeated recovery failures.

Subutex and Methadone in Treatment of Opioid Addiction

Recovery from opioid addiction initially centers around physical stabilization: specifically the management of opioid withdrawal. This is an essential step for the vast majority of opioid addicted people seeking help. Research has shown a 90% failure rate for opioid treatment programs that do not offer medication assistance.

Methadone was the original medication FDA-approved for treating opioid addiction although Subutex has been recently introduced into opioid treatment programs around the country as a viable alternative. Subutex is effective especially for milder levels of opioid dependency.

Subutex is a brand name version of buprenorphine, the partial opioid agonist that reduces withdrawal symptom sickness. Most patients are familiar with “Suboxone” which is a popular buprenorphine-based film that is dissolved under the tongue and is taken once per day. It differs from Subutex in that it contains naloxone so that it cannot be easily abused intravenously.

A number of methadone clinics began offering subutex in the past few years in an effort to expand treatment options for patients. Because subutex can be abused, it is typically administered daily in the clinic by a nurse where it can be supervised.

If you are considering entering a treatment program for opioid misuse, you may want to ask about the variety of medications utilized by the clinic or physician. Some patients have successfully transitioned from methadone to subutex while others enter the program starting with subutex. This is a decision best made in conjunction with your treating doctor who can formulate a treatment plan based on your history of opioid use.