Our Views

I’ve wondered, many times, how people who work in methadone clinics sleep at night. People come to them addicted to heroin, wanting to get off drugs and, instead, they are offered addiction to methadone as an alternative. What are they thinking? Why don’t they get heroin addicts into drug detox and rehab?

There are all kinds of reasons – most of which amount to choosing what is perceived as the lesser of two evils. But that’s like killing someone ‘humanely’ – they’re still dead.

Really, we’re just trading one problem for another. Why don’t people at methadone clinics simply get the addicts coming to them for help into drug detox and rehab? It isn’t as if they’re not available. There are thousands of rehab centers all over the country.

Many heroin addicts - I would say ‘most’, but I don’t have the stats on it - never get to the point of willingly going to a drug treatment facility of any sort and asking for help. It’s rare. So, here’s the addict, he’s finally gotten up to the point of wanting help, and instead of getting him the drug detox and rehab he needs, he’s given another drug to which he then becomes addicted. If I did that, I’d have trouble living with myself.

Time to take off the rose-colored glasses. The lesser of two evils is not enough. Heroin addicts and the loved ones who usually get them into treatment should demand a drug detox program and rehab so they can get off drugs, and treatment facilities should demand their right to deliver it.

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