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Why are there so few treatment options for addicts?

Drug addiction is a uniquely difficult problem to face in terms of treatment.

I think that options for addiction treatment are often limited by the fact that someone addicted to drugs likely does not have a substantial amount of money, even if they were to put all of their money into recovery, it may not be able to cover the costs of reasonable treatment.

We also cannot reliably know how to treat drug addiction to drugs, especially ones that have been recently invented/discovered, and consumed by people. If there's nothing, or very little, known about a specific drug, you would have to make assumptions in treating this drug addiction.

Even for drugs that have been used by humans for a long time, there is still not an extensive knowledge about drug addiction treatment. Some approaches to treating drug addicts vary wildly.

Drug addiction has caused people to do things that they otherwise would not do. Some of these things are hard to imagine, in some circumstances it might be shocking, or it even might you feel repulsed to know what people have done in order to continue an addiction. Because of this, people get the general impression that people who are drug addicts, are generally unreliable, not trustworthy, thieving, etc. - whereas this is not always true, and I can think of many drug users who are just as honest and good as an individual as non-drug users.

It only takes a few to make the whole look bad.
 
Thanks Bill! :)

I hope as time goes on, the future will hold more treatment options for drug addiction. I am sure with time we will find more effective treatment, or at the least, will increase the number of treatment options.

I also hope that more funding in the United States will go towards treatment and mental/physical health services (either nationalizing health care, or subsidizing the costs of health insurance for recovering drug addicts so that treatment options are readily available and affordable).

I also think that the US government should ensure that recovering drug addicts will have reasonable employment, as this is a huge step in the path of getting back on ones feet.

It would also behoove the success rates of rehabilitation facilities to not accept people who are not attempting rehabilitation of their own free will. Putting people into rehabilitation who don't want to be there will never help them quit for good, and it will only serve to worsen the likelihood of recovery by people who are attempting rehabilitation on their own free will.

I think it is also important to realize that for the people who do not want to quit, or who are not yet ready to or are still contemplating it, that they need to come to wanting this change for themselves on their own time. Being forced into treatment or rehabilitation can have a backfire effect, where once the person is no longer being treated or in a rehabilitation facility, they are ready and willing to go back to their drug addiction. This creates a negative image of addiction treatment in the mind of the addict, it enables them to think of rehabilitation or treatment as (an unfair) punishment for their personal choices in life, and it will condition them to avoid situations which may lead to them being forced back into treatment.

That ultimately leads them on a path away from people who are able to help them. If someone is able to use drugs and talk to people who have quit successfully while using, they may eventually befriend this person, gain something from their social interactions with them, and this may cause them to want the same positive change (successfully getting clean) for themselves in their own life.

Before I submit this post, I also want to point out that if nationalized health care isn't going to happen in the United States, for political reasons or rational ones (I'm leaning towards political reasons...) then it is at least imperative that the United States provide free mental health care for its citizens. Without the availability of this, many people will continue to struggle with drug addiction. Mental health care for people is one of the factors that limits the extent drug addiction can negatively effect the person, it can be the first step in a process of rehabilitation/treatment itself, and it can at the very least, provide better skills to people who continue to struggle with drug addiction - which can lead to less drug abuse. For instance, if someone is addicted to a benzodiazepine for anxiety relief, or are using heroin or ethanol for anxiety relief, teaching such people coping skills for anxiety - that don't involve substances - could then reduce their reliance on substances for anxiety relief. If people are using any substance to cope with a lack of self confidence, or self love, enabling these people to gain these beneficial traits may lead to people feeling more in control of their drug use, and may begin using it occasionally instead of constantly, if not quitting all together.

I also wanted to state that I think that a lot of people who suffer from drug addiction have undergone hardships or trauma in life related to their upbringing, which has led them to rely on drugs to help enable them live a more ideal life. If we can prevent these circumstances, we can prevent people from caving into addiction later in their lives. In this sense, I want to say that I think many people who end up becoming parents, are not ready to be parents. I am politically a Libertarian and don't believe in government intrusion into people's privacy and lives. However, enabling people to bring people into this world, only to be ill-equipped in taking care of these children, is enabling a world where we are experiencing an increasing rate of drug addiction. I don't want to fully support the idea that traditional families are not the best way to raise children in today's world, but I have often considered this possibility, and the implications that there are better alternatives to the nuclear family in today's society.
 
Access to care is a huge hurdle for a chemically-impaired person to face. When I went to rehab, it was $22,000 per month, of which my insurance paid very little. If you are relying upon insurance, you typically have to "fail" outpatient first. Fortunately, I had the resources for private pay, but if you don't, the quality of care available to you may be subpar. And then there was the issue of using my FMLA time without the entire hospital I worked at knowing why I was taking time off. There was also the issue of finding treatment that truly was well-versed in treating the dually diagnosed.

Good God, it's amazing I made it through. God Bless those who don't.
 
Addiction is just so unpredictable and the field is really in its infancy. I wish there were more options than 12 step and the few other programs.
Captain Heroin said it right the future hopefully will bring more treatment options. Hopefully the realm of neuroscience will find something but shit like they say in treatment its not a switch you can turn on and off. This shit is a battle. I mean its so prevalent nowadays that IMO in America its not that frowned upon because its such a problem. If you're trying to get help people understand.
Cap I'm worried about healthcare I have no insurance and really really need coverage for mental health. I fucking hate politics with a passion its bullshit. I was gonna go more in depth about healthcare and more problems in our country but im not even gonna go there it sucks.
 
hey, junkieman, what part of the country do you live in? I know that so many programs have been cut from an already dismal starting point but there is still some decent care through County mental health services where I live. It's got a lot of dedicated people working with no budget and very few services but they seem to go the extra mile when people really seek out help. Have you tried your county yet? (I know it varies wildly).<3
 
Yeah it really varies. Im in the south, I moved here from up north. Medicaid is hard as hell to get here, my boy got his leg amputated and it took him months to get it.
Up there all you do is apply for disability and you are automatically approved. Its easy to get medicaid where i came from.
Thankfully the sun and weather are really doing wonders for me cause I've had rough times but stayed mentally sound and relatively happy.
I could look more in depth into county funded services though. Im in a big city it was just kind of a shock to hear so much trouble with things down here.
 
You know, the thing is, prohibition is largely responsible for drug addiction... The negative consequences of being an addict would be significantly reduced, almost to the point of being perfectly acceptable vice (like smoking cigarettes) if people no longer had to fear the government, be forced into rehabs and prisons, pay ridiculous sums of money for something that costs almost nothing to manufacture, and no longer worry about dangers from buying off criminals or dealing with the impurities used as cutting agents. That being said, Captain is spot on. They're really needs to be a large, nationalized, support system for drug addicts trying to recover (and I'm not talking about prisons, which seems to be the method the US prefers right now!) mainly by treating the underlying causes (usually depression, and other mental illness).

The thing is, addiction as a disease is still not fully accepted by everyone, even addicts. I'm sure that plenty of people would be perfectly content to be addicts all their lives as long as the consequences were minimized by ending prohibition. Of course there is also the negative stigma of being an addict. "It's your own damn fault!" "Get clean, just quit!" "You're pathetic!" These are not uncommon phrases heard by addicts. The government might not care about addicts. All that being said, there are promising signs, suboxone being a major step in the right direction (IMO). Hopefully gene therapy, in the future, will be looked into for treatment of addiction.
 
wooger said:
and if addiction is a disease, why is it so frowned upon?
Click to expand...

it's illogical, but that is the way it is. Have to go with the flow.

Once you find yourself struggling with addiction, you have to find super-human strength and discipline. Most will fail, but you can't let that make you give up hope. Most will either have no help, or even be stigmatized as subhuman and criminal, and you can't let that make you give up hope either.
 
If anyone at all remembers, the ACA was going to have a single payer option, that being government subsidized health care, and that was scrapped in the first arguments about it. That was a non-starter. The first thing that needs to change is lobbying. Lobbying is legal, full-on corruption. When so much money is spent on political campaigns through some subsidiaries of other subsidiaries of HMOs, how is change ever going to be possible?

On the other issue, addiction is such a multifaceted problem. Those being socioeconomic, emotional, and on the withdrawal side, physical issues that tackling one of the problems without the other is not going to solve the whole beast. Also, like other posters had said, neuroscience is in itself is a science that is in its infancy. In my opinion though, the socioeconomic hurdles are the biggest challenge to tackling addiction as a whole. When we live in a society that puts so much pressure, pressure which all stems from economic roots, a portion of the society will sucome to anything which alivates the pain associated with not achiving those expectations. Humans will find way to aliviate pain. Its natural.

That is why I am a socialist.
 
The fact of the matter is that on the whole drug addicts are annoying, disruptive, lying, awkward drains on the people around them. I can happily admit that having been one, it's a rare person in active addiction that is actually a positive influence on the world around them. I'm not saying they don't exist but the situation is not the regular one. Naturally this results in a stigma, a certain amount of which you've got to say is deserved if you're being really honest, but also a lot of which isn't.

Many people would disagree with the 'disease' theory and I've heard both sides of the debate argued very thoroughly. I'm unsure where I sit, but I know that quoting out of the DSM-V doesn't do it for me anymore-that text is just a catalogue for selling pharmaceuticals really-and I'm not interested in dictionary definitions either. Do I think there are a certain group of people that are susceptible to drug addiction? Yes. Is there necessarily one underlying physiological cause that can set apart one group of people as being addicts? I'm not so sure. The complex nature of the brain and consciousnesss opens up a whole spectrum of possibilities as to why people might be more susceptible than others, and I think we're years and years away from being able to unpick in any great understanding the nature of the issue.
 
Personally I haven't heard any one solid explanation of what 'addiction' is that explains it holistically and comprehensively. I don't know whether it's even productive to think of it in that manner.

There are some basic physical truths that are undeniable but as to 'addiction' and everything it encompasses, I'm yet to hear a convincing explanation of what it is.

I think that complicated nature of the issue tied to the stigmatisation of substance abusers is what is holding back treatment options. Drug addicts don't come very high up the list when it comes to research funding, and thus the lack in improvement.

Also.....why would the medical/pharmaceutical industry be interested in 'solving addiction'? It's a nice little earner for them on all fronts. No reason for any of those with the financial clout to fund research to rock the boat. We regularly see people like Prof. Nutt who actually speak sense on the subject quickly removed from any position of power.
 
A theory:

Over the years society has expanded to trillions of people. At the same time technology has evolved. People today may have less of a sense of being necessary. People today have a greater sense of hopelessness regarding changes to their environment. Maybe this is an ego thing .. maybe a combination of that and fact.

This has caused an underlying sense of pain. This has kicked the reward system into overdrive .. the seeking of pleasure/avoidance of pain amped up to compensate. Hence the prevalence of addiction. Its a result of the 'advancement' of society.

Its a natural causational phenomena.

The remedy .. a third world war. A radical reduction in the human population and a reinstatement of equilibrium on all levels.

One way or another i think Universal Nature will take care of this. We do not seem able to. Until then, maybe addiction therapies that offer alternative perspectives may become more main stream.

Again .. this is just a theory.

Hey
 
Until AA addiction was considered a moral failure, very little to no treatment options existed. Then AA was established, but the problem was that it considered Alcoholism different from Drug Addiction (idiotic in my opinion, but this was the 1920s). This led to Jimmy K and the creation of NA which viewed addiction as the an all encompassing issue that included alcohol (hence the statement "Alcohol is a drug" How it Works) Following that things like Life Ring, Secular Recovery and SMART came along. Furthermore, medication has been created to help with addiction. We also now have CADC counselors, CBT, addiction studies etc etc.

Its a young field, and there isn't always a ton of money in treating addiction. But we are in much better shape now then those a few decades ago.
 
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