What Science Says to Do If Your Loved One Has an Opioid Addiction
I read this, as a recovering addict that went through my own hell mostly from alcoholism, and wondered where the &quot;science&quot; part was?<p>For instance this sentence &quot;More than 13 percent of its participants died after treatment,1 mainly of overdoses that could potentially have been prevented with evidence-based care.&quot; The argument is that they &quot;could&quot; have been prevented but how do they really know that? How many people in general die of an overdose after X number of stays in a rehab? Through my own experiences going to rehab, I have known of many people who die. The fact is you can&#x27;t predict which people will &quot;get&quot; it any better than you can predict if it will rain next month.<p>I also disagree with this notion that being on suboxone or methadone indefinitely is a legitimate solution. Like what? You&#x27;re advocating to stay on a drug the rest of your life? That isn&#x27;t recovery at all, it&#x27;s a band-aid that will likely lead to relapse and promotes a perpetual notion of being sick.<p>I also disagree that their supposed evidence that CRAFT gets twice as many people into rehab has much relevance. How many of those people relapsed? How many of the people that didn&#x27;t go to rehab ended up overdosing OR recovering? We don&#x27;t get the whole picture so the &quot;evidence&quot; is mute.<p>They knock 12-step which is fine but it turns out that it works for millions of people.<p>There is no silver bullet here.<p>While I have mixed feeling about the &quot;tough love&quot; approach, I can tell you from personal experience that the only reason I&#x27;m not buried right now is because at a certain point the floor dropped out too low, my family and friends abandoned me, I lost everything for a moment, and the pain and horror reached a level that finally I had a change of psyche on my OWN and realized I wanted to get better.<p>In my own humble opinion the only &quot;science&quot; that matters on this subject are the opinions of those whom have lived it and recovered. Go survey the opiate addicts that didn&#x27;t end up dead and find out what worked for them.