Opioid Addiction and Suboxone

If you have encountered this problem directly or indirectly, it helps to know about opioid addiction and Suboxone. The opioid crisis rages on across the country, but treatment professionals are making strides dealing with the problem, especially with Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT). One of the historical problems dealing with long term opiate addiction has been detox regimens were not sufficient to manage withdrawal, either the acute withdrawal or the long-term withdrawal accompanied by psychological obsession with the drug. Most opioid addicts who reached out for help wouldn’t make it through the withdrawal period and would either return to the opioids or substitute with another drug to deal with the withdrawals.

Opioid withdrawal isn’t fatal but it makes a person feel like they’re dying. Methadone treatment has been used for quite awhile with mixed results. In any sizable town you can usually find a methadone clinic. In the last twenty years or so, more and more treatment professionals have started using Buprenorphine. Here is a guideline to the different forms of Buprenorphine. At NewDay Counseling, our medical director prescribes Suboxone. We’ve found it the safest, most effective MAT for opioid addiction, with the least risk of abuse. Also, with Suboxone, it can be taken at home – the client’s life is not disrupted by daily trips to a clinic. Our goal in most cases is to use Suboxone to detox and then as a short term maintenance until the person has been in treatment for a sufficient amount of time to deal with the consequences of the addiction, to establish a support system, and to move past the psychological obsession.

At NewDay we think it’s critical to combine MAT and counseling, usually in an outpatient setting. For more serious cases inpatient treatment is necessary. The key to success is long-term recovery management. What this means is that the opioid addict once in recovery needs a recovery plan, then the person must manage the recovery plan — they must cooperate during the medication assisted period, the treatment period, and the follow up that can entail an exercise program, a diet, spiritual growth, long term counseling for past trauma, support group attendance and so forth. People who manage their recovery stay clean and sober, and, they not only stay abstinent, they grow and learn to live a good life without drugs. This happens all over the world, but we hear mostly about the problems. The problem still exists, but recovery is real and it’s getting easier to attain as we make improvements in treatment methods.