Reply to Just how prevalent is this oxy addiction thing among our young adults in top privates?

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[quote=Anonymous]A couple of myths about treating opiate addiction, some of these appearing in this thread, that can contribute to poor treatment outcomes:

1) Treatment doesn't work unless the addict wants to recover.  False; court mandated attendees of rehab have success rates as good as those who attend rehab voluntarily.

2) The addict has to hit rock bottom before treatment can work.  False; early treatment has the highest success rates.  Hitting bottom means no treatment until someone is a hardened long-term user.  These are the hardest people to treat.

3) Parents need to tough love their addict children or they are enabling them.  False; kids parents who treat this as a medical problem and not a moral failing that reflects poorly on them have a much better chance of success.  This does not rule out boundary setting--Naranon can be helpful for parents in this regard.

4) A personal physician is the best source of advice on how to treat addiction.  False; very few doctors have a clue about how to approach addiction and really don't want to deal with it.  They will throw out crazy suggestions like sending a relatively new addict to a methadone clinic (suitable only for the most hardened addicts) or call a colleague up and give the suggestion of a random rehab.

5) Because recovery often fails, we should just rely on "harm reduction." False; this amounts to relegating anyone with even just a nascent addiction problem to a lifetime of addiction by maintaining them for years on addictive substitutes like methadone and suboxone, which can be even more difficult drugs to kick.  Even worse, people on these drugs often still use heroin whenever they can get enough cash to score.  Naltrexone, injectable or implant, is a much better route as it is not addictive and blocks opiate receptors.

6) Detox can be done only in a medical facility.  False; for otherwise reasonably healthy people, opiate detox is not dangerous.  Supervised at home detox is way more uncomfortable than medical detox, which serves as a deterrent to future use.  Medical detox often relies on suboxone, an equally addictive drug, whereas home detox does not.

7) Residential rehab is the only sure way to recovery.  False; residential rehab success rates are abysmally low.  The rehabs justify them by saying relapse is part of the recovery process and eventually the person will recover by cycling through rehab over and over.  Many community run outpatient rehabs and DIY rehab (at home detox and lots of NA) supervised by knowledgeable family have better success rates at a fraction of the cost (almost none for DIY). The book "Inside Rehab" is instructive here.[/quote]

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