Addicted America: Maintenance treatments 'widely underutilized' for drug recovery in U.S.
WASHINGTON (SBG) - The operator of a drug and alcohol treatment center is raising concerns about a time-tested method to recovery.
Maintenance treatments involve using medications, like methadone, an opioid, to help a patient beat addiction. It’s supported by several groups including The National Academy of Medicine, the American Medical Association, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Nick Mathews operates Stillwater Behavioral Health, located in southern California.
After a four-year fight and multiple stints in rehab, Mathews says he finally achieved sobriety after quitting cold turkey.
“It can be overwhelming,” said Mathews. “Withdraw symptoms are incredibly difficult.”
Mathews now focuses on helping others beat addiction through an abstinence-based approach, offering a client-centered treatment program.
When asked about maintenance treatment, Mathews said his own experience offered no clear conclusion to being drug-free.
“It was just you take this milligram every day until you die, which is such a daunting thing to me,” said Mathews. “There’s been sort of created this loophole for people to take advantage of. You know the path of least resistance for the addict is always to take another substance.”
In 2005, the World Health Organization added methadone and buprenorphine to its list of essential medicines.
“As part of their treatment, they receive opioid medications, just like anybody would receive who has diabetes, they receive insulin,” Dr. Carl Hart, a psychology professor at Columbia University. “Somebody who has hypertension, they receive an anti-hypotensive medication.”
In the United States, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids more than quadrupled between 1999 and 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The institute reports fewer than half of private-sector treatment programs offer maintenance treatments for opioid use disorders.
“To help people that are addicted to opioids actually protect them and eventually achieve recovery,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “The most effective intervention that we have.”
Volkow says studies show that abstinence-only recovery options lead to higher rates of relapse and self-harm.
