AHS Views

I have been hearing from quite a few people lately who have tried treatment programs that use substitute medications. The problem with them, quite frankly, is that they just don’t work. One family I counseled not long ago had a son who had been to three such programs trying to handle his heroin addiction. Each program prescribed a medication to supposedly handle the cravings - he’d tried methadone, suboxone and buprinorphine – and each time he was unsuccessful at staying clean. I suggested that this time around he find a drug rehab that uses a different approach.

The unfortunate truth is that many hospital-based drug rehab or treatment programs are very quick to put a person on these types of medications as a “solution” to the problem. Sadly, it’s basically trading one drug for another, which makes no sense and doesn’t lead to long term success. In fact, what most people don’t realize is that it can take far longer to fully withdraw from drugs like methadone than the street drugs they are supposed to replace, and the process can be far more painful. But finding a drug-free treatment approach can be very difficult.

Luckily for this young man, I was able to help his family find a successful drug rehab program that didn’t use substitute drugs. He enrolled about a month ago - the treatment is working and he couldn’t be happier. His family called me the other day to thank me again for helping them. Like many families in similar situations, they wished they could have found this drug rehab program sooner so he wouldn’t have had to go through all the failures with other treatment approaches, and the agony of continued addiction. They’re very happy that he’s finally enrolled in a program that will help him.

It’s clear to me that substitute medications hurt more than they help. Finding a successful drug rehab program that doesn’t use them is definitely the way to go.