AHS Views

Some people don’t want addiction help, and some people do. Yesterday I wrote a blog about methadone. I received numerous comments from people who are on methadone for pain, or because they were addicted to heroin and wanted to overcome that addiction, but when drug rehab and other addiction help treatment didn’t work for them, they turned to methadone.

I don’t see that anyone would have a problem with someone in chronic pain using methadone because they just can’t function without it. I certainly don’t.

However, there are a few things I would like to say to those who are using it to overcome heroin addiction, or addiction to other opiates.

• Everyone who commented felt strongly that methadone was not a replacement for heroin. Okay, so why is it called Methadone Replacement Therapy - MRT?  Because that’s exactly what it is. Methadone replaces the heroin. If you search “replacement for heroin” on the Internet, methadone is what you will find. So please tell me what would be a better description.
• One commenter said that methadone is used only for those who have not been successful with drug rehab or other addiction help. That may be the case for those who are on methadone more or less permanently, but it is not the case for people who are taking methadone as a step towards full recovery – i.e. no longer dependent on or addicted to any drug.
• After receiving the comments, I called several people connected to rehab and detox facilities to do an informal survey. What I learned from that survey was that between 40% and 60% of the people who want to get off methadone are also taking benzodiazepines. Xanax is the most commonly prescribed benzo. Whether they get it from a methadone clinic or not doesn’t seem relevant. Nor does the fact that most, not all, methadone deaths happen when methadone is combined with other drugs – or alcohol. Perhaps those people who are taking methadone think they’re not going to be taking any other drugs so there is no risk. Well, many of them may not take other street drugs but there’s obviously a good chance – about a 50% chance, according to my little survey -  that they have been, or will be, prescribed another drug by their doctor. What happens to the risk factor then?
• I have worked with many former heroin addicts. In fact, I employ and work with several currently. All of them have been completely drug free for over five years. I also have two kids who received addiction help and are now drug free. I have a son-in-law who was a heroin addict and is now drug free - he kicked cold turkey. And I have a friend who edits for me – she was a heroin addict and also kicked cold turkey, with no addiction help, two decades ago. It can and has been done by thousands of people. It is not an incurable disease.
• One commenter mentioned that methadone was not harder to get off of than heroin and said it just takes longer. I would say that if someone is experiencing pain and discomfort for a longer period of time that you could describe that as ‘harder’. The longer the withdrawal process, the less likely you will have success. Most people cannot withdraw by themselves; in fact I have seen failure rates in the 90% range - which is why some people do better when they also have medically assisted drug detox. You use some drugs for a brief period of time, but then you’re off them altogether.
• I have yet to see any scientific proof that former heroin addicts cannot produce enough endorphins and therefore need methadone. I have also not heard of anyone getting their endorphin levels tested prior to being put on methadone replacement therapy. So, where is the proof that endorphin deficiency is the source of the problem? Where is the proof that the right addiction help couldn’t work? If you have real data on this, I would appreciate receiving it.

I was never addicted to heroin so I cannot feel what you feel. But the fact is, with enough persistence, people can get off heroin and not need methadone. People can live drug free and none of you should have a problem with that. You may have chosen the methadone path, but addiction help is possible - which is why I do what I do.

If you don’t want addiction help, if you would prefer to stay on methadone, then you certainly don’t need anyone’s permission to do so. But if you think it would be a good idea to live drug free, by all means look for other alternatives. I don’t know how many thousands of people have been successful finding the addiction help they need to overcome heroin without having to replace it – yes, that’s what it is – with methadone, but I do know that, for most, it is possible. Call me if you would like to look into it. 877-554-7308. That’s Addiction Help Services.

Drug addiction help will be needed by more adults as teens graduate from high school and enter college. With 50 percent of high school students thinking prescription drugs are safe because they come from the doctor, the prescription drug problem can only get worse. And even more people will be checking into drug detox and drug rehab for prescription drug addiction help.

One study said that 40 percent of kids think prescription drugs are safer than street drugs, but when the Drug Czar spoke last week in Tampa, Florida, he said the number was actually 50%.when it comes to high school students.

High school students don’t seem to be particular when choosing a drug, Adderall, Vicodin, OxyContin, and Xanax are mentioned frequently. Prescription drug addiction is definitely going to be a problem for tens of millions of people in the future and those people will need addiction help services just as if they were on cocaine or heroin.
 
The drugs are available from friends and in many families’ medicine cabinets. If they aren’t available there, many students buy them on campus - Ritalin and Adderall on any high school campus go for $2 a pill.

Locking up your medicine cabinet will help, keeping track of your prescriptions and your kids’ prescriptions will also help.

Although everyday use of opiates or benzodiazepines will cause addiction sooner rather then later, drug addiction may come about slowly for some and quickly for others. As everyone metabolizes drugs differently, addiction doesn’t depend on taking a drug for a certain length of time, or at a certain dosage.

The hardest drugs to withdraw from, and the ones that need the most medical attention, are opiates (Vicodin and OxyContin) and anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax and Valium. Addiction help services for those drugs almost always requires drug detox prior to drug rehab.

Facing up to drug addiction in the family can be very difficult – we see it every day. But if someone needs addiction help services, the sooner they get it the higher the chance of recovery and you could be saving their life. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Although not true of all drugs, the withdrawal process for some is so severe, and potentially dangerous, that medically-supervised detox is vital as a first step to drug rehab. Heroin, methadone, alcohol and benzodiazepines such as Xanex, are good examples - about one in four people coming off these drugs are at risk of seizure or other medical complications. To avoid life-threatening situations, and help with the extreme pain one can sometimes encounter during withdrawal, I usually recommend medical detox. Some drug rehab programs offer detox as part of the treatment, but others may require patients to attend an outside medical detox facility before admission. It’s important when trying to locate a detox that you give complete information about the drugs being used so they can determine exactly what will be needed. High dosages of methadone are especially difficult to handle. However, once the detox is done, full drug rehab that gets down to the bottom of why the person started drugs in the first place can begin.

If you or someone you know needs treatment and you’re not sure if drug detox will be needed as the first step, call Addiction Help Services at 1-877-554-7308. We’ll help you determine whether detox is needed, and help you find a safe medical detox, and a successful drug rehab program.

Drug rehab is more successful when other drugs aren’t substituted

I was recently doing research on alcohol abuse and came across some startling information – the current trend in alcohol and drug rehab programs is to get the person off drugs or alcohol by putting them on another drug. In other words, they simply substitute one drug for another and send the ‘former’ alcoholic or addict on their way – allegedly cured. This is called ‘medication therapy’ and, believe it or not, is actually considered valid ‘treatment’. However, successful drug rehab programs offer a drug-free approach.

Let me clarify the role of drugs in stopping addiction: When an alcoholic or drug addict wants to quit the habit, they first have to go through withdrawal. How painful an experience that will be depends on how much they’ve been drinking for how long, or what drugs they’ve been taking, and how much, for how long. Withdrawal can be severely painful and sometimes dangerous, even life-threatening. In fact, fear of withdrawal symptoms is often enough to deter any efforts to get clean.

To get through withdrawal safely and relatively comfortably, many people choose to do a medically-supervised drug or alcohol detox. This process often involves the use of drugs to lessen the withdrawal symptoms. However, the drugs are given for a very short time – sometimes just a few days – not enough to cause addiction. By the time the person has completed the detox and goes back out into the world, they are no longer taking drugs – not the drug they walked in on, and not the drug that helped them through withdrawal. Having come through withdrawal safely and relatively comfortably, the person can now get into full drug rehab, as needed, to address the reasons they turned to drugs or alcohol in the first place so they can fully handle their addiction. This bears no resemblance to ‘medication therapy’, and you should not confuse the two.

I’ve worked with many families and friends of addicts over the years and most are looking for programs that don’t require a person to be drugged up on pharmaceuticals when they leave treatment. The fact that so many places are now promoting the use of these substitutes for any type of addiction was shocking to me, especially in light of the fact that none of the drug rehabs using this type of treatment have a decent success rate. How could they? They’re not addressing the problem in any way, shape or form.

To the average person looking for help this may seem like the way to go. Personally, I would much rather not have to wake up every morning and take a pill just to get through the day. There are plenty of successful drug rehabs out there that don’t use ‘medication therapy, it’s just a matter of finding one that is the right fit for the user. If you’re looking for help for yourself or someone you love, my advice would be to ask for a drug-free drug rehab program.

Under the state of California’s Proposition 36, anyone convicted of drug possession has three chances to complete a drug and/or alcohol rehabilitation program before they are sent to prison to serve time for their offenses.

According to a recent article released by the San Francisco Chronicle, an assessment of California’s Proposition 36 has just been done and shows that half of those sentenced to drug rehab never completed a program and a quarter never showed up. And even those that complete most treatment programs often do not end up staying off drugs long term as many programs offered have a permanent recovery rate of 3-10%.

In fact, I spoke to a former addict who told me that while in a program he was told that only 1 out of 10 would complete it and out of those, one would stay off drugs.

Currently in California, the governor demanded that judges be allowed to put those in jail who do not complete treatment and/or who continue to use drugs. But, statistics show that jailing drug addicts also does not solve the problem.

There are a few drug rehab programs offered that have over 70% success rates for recovery but why are these not offered to those required to do treatment so that they have a very good chance for permanent recovery from addiction? Why would the government not fund or provide financing for those programs that achieve very good results?

Are we setting drug addicts up for failure by allowing them to go to programs with low success rates?

Article by Eric

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Most people’s definition of detoxification is simply just withdrawing from the drug. In most cases, a medically-supervised withdrawal is not necessary, especially with most stimulants and even painkillers and heroin, although it is often preferred with the latter two.

Even though a common aide is to have someone ‘sleep it off,’ alcohol and some other drugs can be very difficult to withdraw from when a person is consuming large quantities. Medical detoxification helps someone to systematically withdraw from alcohol or drugs by reducing the amount and/or using other medicines to ease the process and eliminate the risk of seizure and other severe drug withdrawal symptoms.

People most often wanting or needing a medically-supervised detoxification before beginning addiction treatment include those on benzodiazapines (Xanax, Valium), opiates (prescription painkillers, heroin, methadone), barbiturates (Phenobarbital) and heavy amounts of alcohol.

One main problem with this is, though, that many drug users will try to stop their treatment after detox thinking that their problem is solved, but in actual fact they are much better off statistically to go into a longer-term drug-free residential rehabilitation program after detoxification.

In recent years there have also been other classes of prescribed drugs that require medical detox to step down from. These drugs include antipsychotics (Zyprexa, Risperdol, Seroquel), antidepressants (Paxil, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, etc.) and other mind-altering prescriptions.

Given that more information and side effects of these drugs are discovered each year, more and more people are deciding to not take them and are seeking alternative treatments.

These types of drugs have very severe withdrawal symptoms and people coming down from them often experience sudden psychotic episodes, so stepping down gradually in a medically-supervised environment is a good approach rather than weaning down at home.

Have you known anyone or heard stories of someone trying to withdraw from some of these drugs on their own? What was the result?

Article by Eric

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