Heroin Treatment: What Works
Based on a recently released study of 28 states, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found heroin-related deaths doubled from 2010 to 2012. Heroin-related overdose deaths nationwide surged to 8,257 between 2012 and 2013, a 39 percent jump. New York City logged 420 heroin-overdose deaths (2013). And the state of Arizona experienced a 90 percent increase in heroin deaths within the past decade. Why?
Heroin Epidemic
According to an online Huffington Post article, the epidemic of opioid use gained its foothold in the United States during the 1990s. It became commonplace to treat chronic pain with OxyContin, Percocet and Opana.
The CDC cites the prescription opioid epidemic as the worst of its kind in our nation’s history. Director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, notes the opioid epidemic as one of a very few U.S. health problems that is worsening.
Frieden cited a fourfold increase in opiate-caused deaths in a ten-year span, accounting for almost 17,000 opiate-overdose deaths annually Upwards of 400,000 individuals end-up seeking emergency room treatment each year due to opiate use.
Recently, a federal-state crackdown on “pill mills” dispensing the opioid painkillers made the drugs scarce. Heroin, a cheaper opioid drug, became the alternate drug-of-choice. According to Frieden, three-fourths of those who use heroin started with pills.
Heroin Treatment
The National Center on Substance Abuse study done in 2012 at Columbia University arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. addiction treatment system warrants a “significant overhaul.” The study posed the question as to whether the “low levels of care” usually received by addiction patients constituted a type of medical malpractice.
Methadone
According to a National Institutes of Health publication (2000), methadone maintenance was developed in 1964. It was a medical response to the New York City post-World War II heroin epidemic.
Early studies cite methadone maintenance as a means to reduce and/or eliminate heroin use, reducing death rates and heroin use-related criminality. Methadone maintenance effects are reported to relieve craving for the narcotic, and block the heroin-induced high.
Buprenorphine (Subutex)
Buprenorphine was a 1970s development, and regarded as a safer alternative to methadone, based on its lower risk of overdose. It is capable of producing a “high” if injected. Originally approved as a pain reliever, it has been reported to lower overdose death rates and improve an addict’s chance of staying clean. It was approved by the FDA in 2002.
Buprenorphine-Naloxone (Suboxone)
Suboxone is a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone. Naloxone is used by paramedics to revive victims of overdose. Approved by the FDA in 2002, Suboxone was formulated to send the user into withdrawal if improperly used by injecting it. It is reported to be the most widely prescribed substitute-drug treatments for addiction to opioids.
What Works?
Trading an addiction to heroin for dependence on another drug such as Methadone, Subutex or Suboxone is a drug-substitution approach to rehabilitation treatment. The addict remains drug dependent.
Understanding the life cycle and mechanics of addiction is vital if workable heroin-addiction treatment is to become a reality on a broad scale. Drug and alcohol use is adopted as a solution to a problem, and ends-up becoming the problem itself.
The life skills necessary to isolating and addressing the underlying problem which initially prompted the drug use is necessary if treatment is to prove workable. Ridding the body of stored drug residuals and toxins which are a source of the drug cravings that drive the addict to use, or relapse after trying to get and stay clean, must also be effectively addressed.
A person was drug-free prior to becoming an addict. Treatment that rehabilitates and actually works can restore that person to being drug-free once again.
