CAN THE NEW BRUNSWICK (CA) HEALTH MINISTER REALLY HAVE SAID THAT:
A letter to the Telegraph Journal, 23 Mar, attributes to N.B. Health Minister Mike Murphy the statement, "Methadone... can be a bottomless pit - people get on it and they don't get off."
The writer goes on to note, ”The whole point of methadone maintenance treatment is that it's possible to be on methadone and hold down a job, raise a family - in general, have a life. If someone eventually weans off methadone entirely, that's fine, but just being on methadone is a huge step forward both for that individual and for the community as a whole. … A person on methadone is a person who has crawled out of the "bottomless pit" of addiction … and has a chance at building a life for themselves. Too bad New Brunswick has a Health Minister who's so poorly informed on this issue.”
URL: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/front/article/611551
posted by RGNewman, MD @ 4:24 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
This is where so many people go wrong when they try to define addiction: they consider the DRUG to be the "bottomless pit" instead of the addiction!
Drug use is not the problem for an addict...in fact I would go so far as to say for an addict, the problem is how they feel when they AREN'T using drugs.
People need to stop defining positive drug treatment outcomes as "using drugs" or "not using drugs" and start focusing instead on all the things that make up a successful outcome for any other type of patient whether they have addiction, mental illness or epilepsy or diabetes. The questions that need to be asked are:
-has this treatment improved the PATIENTS perception of their future?
-does the PATIENT feel their quality of life has been improved because of the treatment?
-has the patients function, productivity and over all outlook been improved because of the treatment>?
-Does the patient feel that his productivity and function has improved ENOUGH? If not, does the patient understand the limitations the illness presents them-are their expectations of the treatment reasonable?
-If the patient is not happy with the progress of this treatment, will another treatment help?
armme is right. One has to look at addiction the way one looks at all other chronic medical conditions: insulin is not the problem, diabetes is; barbiturates are the not the problem, the epilepsy for which (often with very greeat success) they prescribed is; AA is not the problem, the craviung for alcohol is. Etc. . . .
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