Changing Attitudes about Opioid Addiction Lead to More Potential Recovery
I was skiing this past February when my guide brought up fentanyl. Enveloped in alpine bliss, I had asked, I thought rhetorically, what wasn’t perfect about the mountain town around us, a resort made up of trendy restaurants and expanding terrain? He responded with details about the opioid epidemic that was crippling his community before turning his skis downhill so I could photograph him gliding through fresh powder. At the bottom of the run, he paused to speak with a ski-patrol buddy. He returned a few minutes later, ashen. His friend’s brother, a locally renowned free skier, had overdosed on fentanyl the night before.
Relevant
The timing of the above story may have been alarming, but the tragedy is all too familiar to North Americans. The skier was a serious athlete who was mostly vegan, loved the outdoors, and was considered a reliable friend. He also held steady work. In truth, his successful professional and social life is a very common story among the addicted. The deceased skier might have been a doctor, a social worker, or a loving suburban mom. He could be any one of us! The question that remains in light of this athlete’s passing is not why he made this terrible mistake but what his community could have done to prevent it.
Fortunately, organizations such as BrightView, a drug rehabilitation center in Southern Ohio, address addiction as a disease that affects so many individuals. Like cancer or diabetes, prevention, early detection, and measured treatment can combine to attack this epidemic, which has led to a reported 33,091 opioid-overdose deaths in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Our national perspective is changing. First, the role of communities in caring for our loved ones and citizens continues to improve, beginning with policing efforts. From North Carolina to Ohio, officers are instituting new approaches to the growing opioid crisis. According to Katie Zezima of The Washington Post, “Departments accustomed to arresting drug abusers are spearheading programs to get them into treatment.”
Captain Ron Meyers, a 21-year veteran of the Chillocothe Police Department, is “convinced that punitive tactics no longer work against drugs,” stating to Zezima: “We need to make sure the officers understand [treatment] is what is going to stop the epidemic.”
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office is also taking the lead in community awareness, education, and prevention, beginning with parent engagement. Start Talking! is a program “designed to give parents, guardians, educators, and community leaders the tools to start a conversation with Ohio’s youth,” according to Attorney General Mike DeWine’s “Heroin Unit Community Solutions Guide.”
The Community Recovery Project is just one of several volunteer organizations that focus on helping people with addiction achieve sustained recovery. The organization lists valuable recovery assets on its website, including hotlines, shelters, and family support services, among others. The BrightView website also features a Crisis Text Line, an emergency resource that complements the safe and supportive physical environment, site of comprehensive addiction treatment, outpatient addiction-medicine therapists, and innovative buprenorphine and other medical treatments.
Bright View’s Comprehensive Addiction Treatment program includes three vital and evidence-based components: medical, social, and psychological. This combination has proved very effective in establishing meaningful long-term recovery. This triad approach is sanctioned by state and federal health agencies and is the primary strategy at such renowned private facilities as Hazelden Betty Ford. Licensed professionals provide medical treatment, therapy, and social support. A growing base of literature suggests this three-tiered strategy provides the best pathway for sustained recovery.
Every BrightView patient is extensively evaluated before treatment. The professional staff then creates an appropriate and safe withdrawal-management plan, followed by frequent meetings with doctors to discuss progress and answer questions and concerns.
At the same time, individual counseling is established to identify goals and address common recovery side effects such as anxiety, anger, guilt, and shame, among others. Group counseling is also offered six days a week with morning, afternoon, and evening sessions.
Every patient receives a case manager, a master’s-level social worker and/or chemical dependency assistant who charts a successful path to recovery. Case managers assist patients with the daily burdens of recovery, including housing, social programs, employment, and child care.. BrightView strives to create a positive social component where every patient feels successful, faces daily challenges, and ultimately achieves the milestone of complete recovery.
Research on the treatment of opioid addiction has made tremendous strides in recent years, and the achievements continue. For example, the medication buprenorphine can significantly reduce cravings and compulsive behavior for many patients with addiction. This allows the patients brains to heal without the unbearable burden of opioid withdrawal during treatment.
Neuroscientists are also researching the very nature of addiction. Vivek Murthy, the former surgeon general, affirms in a recent National Geographic issue on addiction that a growing set of evidence concludes “addiction is a disease, not a moral failing. It’s characterized not necessarily by dependence or withdrawal but by compulsive repetition of an activity despite life-damaging consequences.”
This paradigm shift concerning addiction is leading to other enormous changes such as placement of Narcan Overdose Training Kits in appropriate locations. These kits, like defibrillators for heart attack victims, can save a significant number of lives.
The kits are but one example of the positive steps communities are taking to address addiction. The change in policing strategies, the growth of community outreach in churches and elsewhere, the increase in volunteerism, and established treatment facilities like Bright View will only increase awareness of opioid addiction and normalize the path to recovery for members of our communities.