Replacement Drug Therapy attracts a debate between the medical and moral definition of addiction. Is this a question of medical necessity or one’s will. Medical research is breaking down why heroin in particular is so hard to lay down for some. Alcohol is a progressive disease. Peak opiate addiction happens fast and it is brutal. I spoke with Keith a 28 year old recovering addict. He sees two truths in the debate. Clean, after 5 years of opiate addiction he talks about his 3 year replacement drug therapy to date. “I am an addict and alcoholic. I work the AA program. I have service commitments in AA and some in NA. I also have been on Subutex for 3 years. It works good for me if I apply recovery principals and work AA. I am an alcoholic at heart but when I found opiates, I was off to the races” Keith say’s opiate addiction is far worst than people imagine and takes determination just to work the program he is on now. Addiction for him is very much a medical condition. He has explained that quitting opiates after long term use for many young addicts is near impossible and the leap to replacement drug therapy still takes iron clad determination, explaining further. “Suboxone or Subutex (subs) work for some and not for others. Subs make you feel normal. There is no post acute withdrawal (PAWS). You feel as you did before you started using; normal”…Here is the problem with many… “Most on subs do not fix what is really broken because they perceive that nothing is broken and don’t use the subs correctly”… “Some take sub “vacations” and use opiates off and on”. This explains why so many young opiate addicts do not recover and continually relapse, even when using subs or methadone. Keith holds on to the premise that he would would prefer the initial week of heavy physical withdrawal than the many months of the post acute phase. For him, subs built his bridge to sobriety.
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December 16, 2009 at 8:56 pm
recoveryhelpdesk
Interesting post. Keith’s experience is shared by a lot of people I know.
Just to help clarify, the medications are called Suboxone and Subutex. These are brand names for two formulations of buprenorphine. The only active ingredient in Subutex is buprenorphine. In Suboxone, the drug naloxone is added. In theory, the naloxone prevents people from injecting the medication. In reality, many people inject Suboxone.
Check out my new blog recoveryhelpdesk.wordpress.com for a post about a young pregnant woman denied her Subutex in jail, causing her to go into severe withdrawal and threatening the safety of her unborn child. The post includes a youtube video interview.
Tom
December 17, 2009 at 12:55 am
Keith
thats crazy tom. i watched the link and the video. wow. but that happens alot i think. cause of what this article is talking about the moral you can do it come on man or woman up and take the bull by the horns.
if i would have been able to quit using by just saying im not going to do it, or maybe hiring a marine drill sgt to stand in front of me during detox and bitch at me and call me a pussy and say im a girl and say come on you can do this, then i could have ended alot of suffering. and if anyone can quit that way i give you my props. but thats not the fact haha. maybe a non addict can stop that way but not me. i can’t just man up and say im done, now that i have some time clean maybe i can think i can but in reality i cannot.
and i feel that people should not comment on just bucking up and you dont need any medicines to help you in your recovery or your just trading one thing for anouther. cause its not true
if u have been thru opiate addiction and seen the other side clean then thats great, but if you have not been addicted to opiates for a peroid of time and have not had to physcally detox then you just have no clue what you are even commenting on and you need to visit someone in detox that has been there for 6 hours and just starting to get sick and ask them about whats going on and how they are feeling.
its just like war and vets. i worked with a vietnam vet, he was shell shocked, every time there was a loud bang, he would duck or hit the ground, when the lights went out he would take cover, he thought the fire whistles were air raid seirns and the enemy was coming in. he was truely a shell shocked vet(not saying thats bad).
NOW if i were to go up to him after a loud bang and he was laying on the floor with his hands covering his head and said, come on jim, MAN UP! you dont need to do that stuff, the war has been over for several deciades! stop acting like that!
That would be doing what the moral people do , it would be judging someone or something as if they think they can tell them how to do something, and never have been in that situation.
i have never been to war, the closest thing to shooting anouther living thing that i have been involved with is hunting deer and small game and thats no where near a war situation. so i would be taking the moral high road and saying come on jim dont need to do that. just like the people who have never been hooked on opiates say come on you dont need those subs or methadone, thats dope too, your just substuting!. well maybe some are substuting and never going to change, but i am changing and i am living a great life today.