17
votes
The war on recovery: how the US is sabotaging its best tools to prevent deaths in the opioid epidemic
https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/05/opioid-addiction-treatment-methadone-buprenorphine-restrictions/
Onerous, unproven, and damaging restrictions on patient access to drugs like methadone and buprenorphine greatly harm addiction treatment in the US. Buprenorphine especially causes no high while alleviating addiction cravings and withdrawal symptoms but remains absurdly difficult to obtain because it is itself and opiate medication. With no end to the opioid crisis in the US, a massive rethink on addiction treatment and access is needed.
Personal experience is that Buprenorphine saved my life.
I started on sublingual strips and made the jump to bupe injections once they were available. I was able to attain a master's degree and rebuild my life using bupe injections. I was also able to quit the injections cold turkey with essentially no withdrawal. It was easier to quit than caffeine.
This was after a few years of trying literally everything else and being unable to stop using heroin.
The strips were a good tool but the injection felt closer to a legitimate cure. Strips had to be taken every day and wore off a bit toward the end of each day. The shot was once a month but actually took closer to 3 months to wear off.
It should be the easiest injection to get in the world, in my opinion.
Congrats on being able to beat the addiction and turn your life around! That's an inspiring story.
Thanks for the kind words, seriously! But I have to give the credit to science. I'd be dead without Buprenorphine. I came close several times when the fentanyl started to really take over in my city. It breaks my heart that more people can't access these medications. They could probably cut the number of addicts in half by next year if there was any serious desire to do so.
The DEA serves no valid purpose. The FDA regulates the safety of drugs. Regular policing can manage the only genuine drug crime: driving under the influence.
The other legal barriers erected only allow criminal networks to thrive on a black market. The ills that we see from drug use are mostly symptoms of a failure to properly address other social issues. Like the lack of affordable housing, job security, decent wages, punitive criminal justice, and lack of access to healthcare. To name but a few.
Take all the money from the DEA and use it to make healthcare (drug treatment programs inclusive) more accessible.
As a former member, I am livid about Narcotics Anonymous’ stance on this issue. By taking this stance, they violate their own traditions, especially the ones where they claim to take no opinion on outside [of NA’s operations] issue, and where they claim the inky requirement for membership is the desire to stop using.
Any opinion on MAT is a violation of those two traditions. When I came up in NA we made no statement about whether another member was “clean.” Members became thus when they said they were. Deficiencies in one’s honest program become apparent soon enough. More importantly, no members recovery is limited by another’s lack thereof. But this rule excludes so many and is a serious stain on NA’s legitimacy.
That said, a lot of the folks on methadone were not well that I met in meetings. They were probably better than they might have been on the street, but they were existing in a kind of limbo. Most of them didn’t start to truly thrive until they weened off. Still better than street outcomes, but suboptimal imo.
But with a dysfunctional NA and lousy mental
Health tx network, probably the best we can do.