The Rehab Struggle and Substituting Drugs for Drugs

Today,  I started my morning with phone calls to our insurance company and to various treatment facilities to inquire about possibly sending my daughter, if that choice is left up to me. In the last 5 years, its always been left up to me and my husband. Zero help, input, interest or assistance from her dad. That's another story in itself. Regardless, my husband has awesome behavioral health coverage through his employer. My daughter turns 26 next month, so she will be losing coverage under our health plan. It scares me to death in some ways, but in other ways I'm relieved. Sometimes I think her prescription drug coverage has been a nemesis.

If you have never looked into treatment facilities, let me just tell you--it is one of the most frustrating, time consuming and often disappointing tasks. You seldom get a live person. You leave several messages. You email their site and it gets no response and you just finally give up and call another. If a person is in the midst of addiction and REALLY wants help---how are they supposed to get it if they cannot even talk to a person? First question when they get someone is "Do you have insurance?" When an addict takes that first step for help, it is crucial. They are out of their mind with withdrawal. They are sick. They aren't real sure how they feel about leaving, yet they also can't wait. Time is of the essence. This country has got to get better in their mental health care. We have got to get better in our substance abuse care and we have GOT to find better alternatives than bankrupting families to buy medications that just do nothing but substitute a drug for a drug.

This brings me to the Methadone/Suboxone Debate. I'll be candid. I hate the evil shit. Sorry for my choice of words, but that is exactly how I feel about that type of opiate treatment. I hate it. I have no other nice word for it and when I see billboards popping up in Springfield, MO, for new clinics, it makes me cringe. 

The only benefit my daughter has ever had from either drug, was the benefit of selling it or trading it for something else. Never once was she prescribed either Methadone or Suboxone and it did not end in utter disaster. I will never understand why the government is helping oversee and fund these clinics when they need to be funding more awareness and actual counseling and treatment for addiction. How is it a treatment facility "has no open beds" but the Methadone Clinic always is accepting new patients? These drugs are supposed to be medications used for short term detox only--and my daughter has friends who have been taking them for many years. To get off of them, they have to go back to rehab to detox from suboxone. 

In my eyes, it is a complete and utter scam. My family's physician has worked harder at trying to assist my daughter with her real problems with addiction than the professional addiction doctors have have done. Am I missing something? How is this helping?  They rope you in with this MYTH at rehabs that "your addict cannot get high off suboxone and cannot get addicted to Suboxone. It blocks the opiate receptors to the brain." OH POPPYCOCK. It isn't blocking anything other than their chance at real sobriety. It makes them feel high just like opiates do. It makes them "need" that medication. It's still a dang opiate. It, just like hydrocodone, is over prescribed. 

They have developed opiate blocking medication such as injections (Vivitrol) and most recently I read that the FDA is trying to approve an implant. I would LOVE the idea of that so much more because it cannot be sold, abused, stolen or traded--however, they have made the shot so unaffordable, that addicts turn to the methadone clinics. These "specialized treatment clinics" are money making clinics who keep your kids addicted to drugs. Think about it--if it's not harmful or a narcotic--then why is it being sold on the street? Does anyone ever hear reports of someone's thyroid medication being stolen to sell on the street?  I have been on it for 15 years and no one has ever tried to buy a Synthroid from me.  My daughter has never stolen my Synthroid to trade for drugs or use. You can't buy sudafed off the shelf per regulations--but you can walk into a clinic and get Methadone dosed out to you? That is insane. If these medications were common practice, then why can't my family physician prescribe them? 

I asked a couple of people their thoughts related to this form of drug treatment and "opiate addiction therapy" and I'll give you their opinion. These are recovering drug addicts. They are the real experts, in my opinion.

Kelsey says:

Suboxone and methadone----

"I feel VERY strongly about both of these things. I believe it is the biggest cop out for people to claim they are "clean" when really they are only lying to themselves. They are 100% switching addiction for addiction because all they do is become dependent on something else. In my opinion, suboxone and methadone have worse withdrawals than heroin. The clinics that are continuing to open with these things are not because they want to help you. They only want your money. That is all they care about. Which another thing, it's another habit you have to be able to afford. They will lie and tell you they are "saving your life", when in reality they could care less about what happens to you as long as they get your money. Hints why they raise your dosage and don't even try to lower your dose down. I got so sick of them that I was offered long term suboxone at a 30 day treatment I was at and I refused. I wanted to save my life, not ruin it even more so I did the taper. I believe that is okay where they taper you from 7-9 days so the heroin withdrawals aren't so extreme but nothing more. The only difference between suboxone/methadone and heroin is that you don't have to look for people on the streets to buy it from. Other than that, you are still addicted to a drug, your body is dependent, the withdrawals are just as bad, you still have to worry about not having enough for the month considering we are addicts and will take more than the prescribed amount more often than not, it's still an everyday battle, and the list goes on and on but I will stop there. They are money making scams to the fullest."

Adriene G. Pruett

"I don't have experience with opiate  supplements other than abusing them to get high (never was I prescribed, they were always someone else's and my only purpose for using it was that to get high). I really only have an opinion on their use. But not the experience of using them to get off another opiate. I believe in its short term use but not long term. When a person leaves treatment my opinion is they should be weened off completely."

I have personally just seen too many texts asking for suboxone, too many people stealing each other's suboxone and the Methadone Clinic should be banned from existence. If you or your child has been on either drug and had good results, such as maintaining employment, not getting high, not abusing their dosage, not injecting it--etc, then please feel free to defend the concept.

In my house they did not work. They are not welcome in my home ever again. For the first time, my daughter has detoxed off of everything and I got a letter from her in the mail and it looked like she wrote it before this nightmare addiction began. No sloppy poorly worded verbiage. An actual letter from her, written with her brain in her handwriting. The brain she has clouded for so long. Please research these drugs thoroughly before you consider using either as a treatment for addiction.

Finding the right program is crucial but your addict CAN choose not to take those medications.

Don't buy the sales pitch.