Why Do We Treat Heroin Addicts Like They Deserve to Die?

yeah very good article basically sums up why some humans are such pieces of shit to others. What's there to do about this though when it is intentionally set up this way by others? The drug trade, Law enforcement, big pharma, prison industry, government all have a hand in the same setup (The drug war), along with greed and capitalism, these people have tremendous power, global influence and i imagine will not be easily swayed by appeals to humanity. I'm sure some people in earnest believe in the drug war but i bet the large majority know why we keep this charade up. If those people in power have to identify with heroin addicts as human beings equal to themselves then there's no way they could keep this drug war up, of course they don't give a fuck in the first place which is the real problem IMO.

it's not going to be like Germany's destruction, this drug war can play out forever unless enough actual people put a stop to it as in some sort of revolution.

 

i wish people would really do thier homework do you know heroin was in the early days a pain killer developed by the chinese. in the 1800s you could go into a store and buy a needle and the drug in a small kit. look at the perscription drug oxycodone the 30mg pain killer that was pretty much forced off the market by the dea. i suffered for 30 years with seraver back ailments and pain i was so glad when a doctor i went to perscribed me this medication i was finnaly able to go back to work and be productive, as i took the meds as perscribed and yet people who wanted the meds to get high with managed to mess it up for all concerned.the reason heroin use is down is because of the sail of oxycodone pills. the dea started the war on this medication around 2007. i had no truble at all getting this medication but the more the dea fought to get it banned the harder it was to get it. the street price went from $5.00 per pill for a 30mg in 2007 to $30.00 per pill at the presant day. the dea mad it harder to buy legally and the ones who can still get them mostly mail order with insurance can make up to $7200.00 for a script of 240 pills which was the amount i received every month. so people who use to be on them who can not get them will pay the $30.00 per pill. i blaime it all on the dea they made the demand very very high and the availability very very low the less pills availible the higher the price. all they did was make thier job very easy instead of trying to catch people they made the availibility almost imposible to get i have seen pharmasist basicaly told keep selling these pills and we will put you in jail. the dea fieled suits against the pharmasuticl companies to stop the production of the medication. the dea took the easy way out and heroin is again on the rise again most addicts seek relieif of pain. and a normal person will never ever understand a socalled opiate addicts drive for the drug. and its very very simple relief of pain I know as thats what i have gone through since 1977 after i was serverly burned over 30% of my body and then having seaver arthiritus and degeneritive disk diesease and surgeries to repair hernias and knee damage and not beeing able to find a medication which was developed for pain management and more effort to get it taken off the market than trying to find bin ladden is so wrong of the goverment they would not do this with diabetic insulin or heart meds. why pain meds. they say because of the death rate look at the adds on tv of the possible side affects of almost every drug i see attorny adds for bad drugs a few months after a new drug hits the market. illegal drugs help the economy more police to arrest people , more jails to house the affenders, more attornies to defend them, detox and rehabs to help the so called addict. the largest buisness in the us is the car industry the second is the construction of prisions. look it up on the internet. and all this is the republican party you can buy a crack pipe in any corner store any apparatice used to smoke weed,crack or needed for the consumption of any other drug i legal to buy until its used something wrong there dont you think legalizing many socalled street drugs will put many many people out of work and we cann't have that. the crime rate will go down dramaticly, police will be layed off lawyers will have fewer drug cases to try, rehabs will close or down size will not need as many judges or court clerks or attorny secrateriys. its like the cold war we had a very huge military one of the biggest in the world and after the fall of communizim in russia i would not be surprised if a small south pacific island about the size of rodisland has a bigger military we may still have the best because of technoligy. like i said the building and staffing of prisons in the us is second to the car industry and thats a shame it really really is. go buy a box or two of sudifed and nitquil oboy your on the list donn't buy draino in that same store dea be up your ass watching your house exspecially if you live in polk county florida thats some of the ingrediants for meth and they are coming out with packaging for pain meds that when you take a pill out of the bubble pack it sends a raidio signal to company that monitors them and lets them know to the second when you took that pill out of the pack and if you are still in pain no more taking another bells will go off and your doctor will be notified that you are abusing them and you are black balled. but with every new thing they come up with there is a way the dealers can get around them they can take them out as ordered one at a time and at the endn of 30 days they do thier thing sell them as usual. the only real way to assure that pain meds go to the one perscribed to and taken at the time as ordered is to have clinics set up and be maned 24/7/ 365 days a year your doctor orders the meds and they go to a distriutor center maned by RN's and doctors and with an ID you go in wait in line to get your dose and depeding how many times you take it say every 4 hours which is six pills a day is how many times you will have to go there it will be like a methodone clinic and we know how much the public loves those places. it is my observation the goverment is getting way to far up our asses. look at the so called red light cameras and traffic cams, buisness cams atm cams thats all big brother the eye in the sky you think the movie enimy of the state is just a movie thats as real as it gets my friends people will not go steal to buy street pain meds such as heroin, oxycodon excetra if the goverment would back off and allow those in servier pain to get the meds they requier with out hassel let the doctors perscribe and distribite the pain meds as they did back in 2007. let them do the foot work and catch the ones selling them on the street. i have no problem what soever with putting those people away but do not let inocent people who suffer with pain have to suffer even more just to make thier job easyer

 

^^^holy price discussion Batman! Have fun with that one mods.

 

^^^ fortunately I think everyone is just going to look at the one HUGE paragraph and decide it is probably not worth the effort to read.

 

If you don't mind me guessing - You work at a methadone clinic don't you.

Speaking of methadone clinic staff - IME, in my years as a patient there, I kinda feel bad for the staff (at least at my clinic) as they have to put up with a lot of shit on a daily basis. And by that I mean that pretty much every day, there's a significant amount of people on the program who show up pissed off for the usual reasons. You have your dopesick who are in a bad mood because they haven't come in for days and are feeling like they'd rather die. Then there's a few who belong in a psych ward (schizophrenics), and so forth.

Whatever the reason, it's usually the staff that these patients tend to take their bad moods out on. I've seen so many nurses, counselors, pharmacy techs, etc. come in go in such a short time period. They usually quit without notice. One particularly bad day, I witnessed 3 counselors quit at the same time. A few of the staff still there now look like they're coming in stoned. I don't blame them. Anyways, my point being that I can see why they would talk shit behind our backs. Some of us give them reason to.

Then they have to deal with management, who are usually indifferent when it comes to complaints. "Deal with it" they say (according to one ex-staff I used to talk to). The big wigs are also apparently very greedy. Case in point - one of the toilets which is used to provide a urine sample has been missing the seat for at least a couple of years. They're too cheap to spend money on a fucking toilet seat. People have had to sit on a dirty rim at times as even he toilet paper is very sparingly changed. Sigh.

Sorry wrong guess there pal. In my job I also deal with a lot of people who are not drug addicts. But I could imagine that would be their attitude at the Methadone clinic, so I see how you might assume that. But really, any place that deals with addicts a lot is going to say a lot of the same things("worthless trash" "world better w/o them" "should just off themselves" "dangers to society" etc)

And to those who are concerned about DRs not treating them fairly because they are in their system as IV drug users or whatever, that doesn't go from hospital to hospital. Maybe it can within hospitals in the same network, like I know 2 of my local hospitals are owned by a ****** Health. There are a lot of laws out there protecting your personal medical information/history. But Dr.'s are privy to the info if its in the best interest of their patient. But there is not one huge hospital database that has your info in it. If you have been to one hospital for an OD and now have a bad back injury, and you are scared they will peg you as a seeker, just go to a different hospital that is not part of the same ownership. They will know nothing about you, and if they do somehow come across the information that you are drug addict without them knowing, you can sue their pants off.

 

^^^ fortunately I think everyone is just going to look at the one HUGE paragraph and decide it is probably not worth the effort to read.

You can also just read the first sentence to know the rest isn't worth a damn.

i wish people would really do thier homework do you know heroin was in the early days a pain killer developed by the chinese.

LOL. Heroin was first synthesized in England, and then further refined and put on the market in Germany.

And to those who are concerned about DRs not treating them fairly because they are in their system as IV drug users or whatever, that doesn't go from hospital to hospital. Maybe it can within hospitals in the same network, like I know 2 of my local hospitals are owned by a ****** Health. There are a lot of laws out there protecting your personal medical information/history. But Dr.'s are privy to the info if its in the best interest of their patient. But there is not one huge hospital database that has your info in it. If you have been to one hospital for an OD and now have a bad back injury, and you are scared they will peg you as a seeker, just go to a different hospital that is not part of the same ownership. They will know nothing about you, and if they do somehow come across the information that you are drug addict without them knowing, you can sue their pants off.

I am not so sure about this. At least here in Germany a patient's history is normally quite reliably transferred from one doctor to another (i.e. clinic/hospital to a patient's general practitioner). I am curious if a patient can demand that the letter not be sent to anyone except the patient himself (I think it would be within the rights of the patient if stated explicitly, but I am not sure). Normally, except in the case of emergencies, the general practitioner is the one who sends a patient to a clinic/hospital along with a possible diagnosis and relevant patient history.

 

In the USA there is something called HIPAA, this link provides a basic understanding of what it means:

http://www.healthit.gov/patients-families/your-health-information-privacy

 

i wish people would really do thier homework do you know heroin was in the early days a pain killer developed by the chinese. in the 1800s you could go into a store and buy a needle and the drug in a small kit. look at the perscription drug oxycodone the 30mg pain killer that was pretty much forced off the market by the dea. i suffered for 30 years with seraver back ailments and pain i was so glad when a doctor i went to perscribed me this medication i was finnaly able to go back to work and be productive, as i took the meds as perscribed and yet people who wanted the meds to get high with managed to mess it up for all concerned.the reason heroin use is down is because of the sail of oxycodone pills. the dea started the war on this medication around 2007. i had no truble at all getting this medication but the more the dea fought to get it banned the harder it was to get it. the street price went from $5.00 per pill for a 30mg in 2007 to $30.00 per pill at the presant day. the dea mad it harder to buy legally and the ones who can still get them mostly mail order with insurance can make up to $7200.00 for a script of 240 pills which was the amount i received every month. so people who use to be on them who can not get them will pay the $30.00 per pill. i blaime it all on the dea they made the demand very very high and the availability very very low the less pills availible the higher the price. all they did was make thier job very easy instead of trying to catch people they made the availibility almost imposible to get i have seen pharmasist basicaly told keep selling these pills and we will put you in jail. the dea fieled suits against the pharmasuticl companies to stop the production of the medication. the dea took the easy way out and heroin is again on the rise again most addicts seek relieif of pain. and a normal person will never ever understand a socalled opiate addicts drive for the drug. and its very very simple relief of pain I know as thats what i have gone through since 1977 after i was serverly burned over 30% of my body and then having seaver arthiritus and degeneritive disk diesease and surgeries to repair hernias and knee damage and not beeing able to find a medication which was developed for pain management and more effort to get it taken off the market than trying to find bin ladden is so wrong of the goverment they would not do this with diabetic insulin or heart meds. why pain meds. they say because of the death rate look at the adds on tv of the possible side affects of almost every drug i see attorny adds for bad drugs a few months after a new drug hits the market. illegal drugs help the economy more police to arrest people , more jails to house the affenders, more attornies to defend them, detox and rehabs to help the so called addict. the largest buisness in the us is the car industry the second is the construction of prisions. look it up on the internet. and all this is the republican party you can buy a crack pipe in any corner store any apparatice used to smoke weed,crack or needed for the consumption of any other drug i legal to buy until its used something wrong there dont you think legalizing many socalled street drugs will put many many people out of work and we cann't have that. the crime rate will go down dramaticly, police will be layed off lawyers will have fewer drug cases to try, rehabs will close or down size will not need as many judges or court clerks or attorny secrateriys. its like the cold war we had a very huge military one of the biggest in the world and after the fall of communizim in russia i would not be surprised if a small south pacific island about the size of rodisland has a bigger military we may still have the best because of technoligy. like i said the building and staffing of prisons in the us is second to the car industry and thats a shame it really really is. go buy a box or two of sudifed and nitquil oboy your on the list donn't buy draino in that same store dea be up your ass watching your house exspecially if you live in polk county florida thats some of the ingrediants for meth and they are coming out with packaging for pain meds that when you take a pill out of the bubble pack it sends a raidio signal to company that monitors them and lets them know to the second when you took that pill out of the pack and if you are still in pain no more taking another bells will go off and your doctor will be notified that you are abusing them and you are black balled. but with every new thing they come up with there is a way the dealers can get around them they can take them out as ordered one at a time and at the endn of 30 days they do thier thing sell them as usual. the only real way to assure that pain meds go to the one perscribed to and taken at the time as ordered is to have clinics set up and be maned 24/7/ 365 days a year your doctor orders the meds and they go to a distriutor center maned by RN's and doctors and with an ID you go in wait in line to get your dose and depeding how many times you take it say every 4 hours which is six pills a day is how many times you will have to go there it will be like a methodone clinic and we know how much the public loves those places. it is my observation the goverment is getting way to far up our asses. look at the so called red light cameras and traffic cams, buisness cams atm cams thats all big brother the eye in the sky you think the movie enimy of the state is just a movie thats as real as it gets my friends people will not go steal to buy street pain meds such as heroin, oxycodon excetra if the goverment would back off and allow those in servier pain to get the meds they requier with out hassel let the doctors perscribe and distribite the pain meds as they did back in 2007. let them do the foot work and catch the ones selling them on the street. i have no problem what soever with putting those people away but do not let inocent people who suffer with pain have to suffer even more just to make thier job easyer

I am sorry but I have to say this, the word is "severe", it is "severe" pain you claim to suffer from.

And after attempting to read some of this, I pray you were writing it on your phone or something. At the same time, I kind of hope you didn't write that whole post using a phone.

 

Well under that link is the following:

What are some of the ways that my health care information may be used and shared?

To make sure that your health information privacy is protected without interfering with your health care, the HIPAA Privacy Rule allows your information to be used and shared in the following ways:

For your treatment and care coordination. For example, your doctors can see what tests you have had and their results, so tests do not have to be repeated
With doctors and hospitals that provide you care, to provide payment for their services
To make sure doctors and other health care professionals give good care
For protection of the public's health, such as to report when the flu is in your area
Your health care provider or health plan does not have to ask you whether they can use or share your health information for these purposes.

Also,

You can ask your provider or health insurer not to share your health information with certain people, groups, or companies. For example, if you go to a clinic, you could ask the doctor not to share your medical record with other doctors or nurses in the clinic. However, the clinic does not always have to agree to do what you ask. In some cases, for instance, your doctor may need to share your information to ensure proper treatment and coordination of care between doctors in the clinic.

Looks to me like health care professionals could, under a certain interpretation of the above, share substance abuse information if they chose to.

 

Sorry wrong guess there pal.

If I came across as rude or condescending, I apologize. I should have worded it differently.

And to those who are concerned about DRs not treating them fairly because they are in their system as IV drug users or whatever, that doesn't go from hospital to hospital. Maybe it can within hospitals in the same network, like I know 2 of my local hospitals are owned by a ****** Health. There are a lot of laws out there protecting your personal medical information/history. But Dr.'s are privy to the info if its in the best interest of their patient. But there is not one huge hospital database that has your info in it. If you have been to one hospital for an OD and now have a bad back injury, and you are scared they will peg you as a seeker, just go to a different hospital that is not part of the same ownership. They will know nothing about you, and if they do somehow come across the information that you are drug addict without them knowing, you can sue their pants off.

I've had to resort to this. I now avoid hospital-a like the plague, even though it's much closer to home. And I've wondered constantly while at the ER in hospital-b if they share their patient info, however, I don't believe they do because at the it's never been brought up. Hopefully that won't change anytime soon.

 

KIDS was definitely a movie that affected me. I was a teen when I watched it and it really opened my eyes up to some things which I'd never even considered.

I watched this recently, and I really enjoyed it. Wicked movie.

 

ro4eva, no I don't think you were being rude or anything, but I will say my job is a little more in depth than passing out Methadone to people all day. Though I do not know what the employees at the clinics do, so I can't say. They are responsible for a powerful narcotic, so at the very least they must be trustworthy.

And I will say in my line of work I have a very good understanding of what type of information is available to DRs in various facilities. Shimmer, that website is a very vague idea of what HIPAA deals with. And I know sharing a person's medical information, if you do a job where you are able to view certain information, is very prohibited. And I can't say for sure about Dr's from different practices and hospitals/clinics/offices, but I would assume it would stand to reason that they cannot release the information. Only in rare cases in which consent is implied, like a person is on their death bed and cannot make the decision to release certain information from say their primary care to an ER Dr. You do say you are form Germany, so most likely things are not going to be the same here in the USA as they are over there.

 

You do say you are form Germany, so most likely things are not going to be the same here in the USA as they are over there.

We've moved around a lot. I actually lived most of my life in North Carolina (Newton). Then we emigrated to Canada (Toronto).

I do know a fair deal about the privacy laws in Canada in relation to healthcare. For example, as a methadone patient, I have to sign a form to allow another doctor to see my chart. But sadly, I don't know shit about the same laws in the U.S. I imagine they must be rather similar though.

 

Rtrain I think I've figured out your profession based on how you type (grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, etc) and your content on your post. I wont say it though as I'm fairly certain I know in a small ball park of your profession or at least what kind of job it is.

 

sounds 1000% like my clinic, trashy ppl that are always mad at something, yelling at their wives/;gf's in front of their mess of kids, being rude to the staff who is just trying to do their job, you show respect and you get respect. i go in and say hello, make eye contact, say thanks you, make small talk conversation if the situation warrants it, say have a nice day and im on my way. and for that when i come in they treat me like a human who is there for a medical reason not some junkie scumbag that is there to try and lie and scam the system. ...plus being liked gets you perks. on saturdays they close at ten, normally if you show up at 10:01 they wont let you in, i woke up at like 9:50 and the clinic is 15mins away from my appt, i called and luckily it was one of the staff i am friendly with and I asked her to hold the door for me for 5 minutes, and she did. had she not, had i just shown up like the rest of those idiots banging on the door yelling and cussing out the staff you can bet your ass i wouldnt have been medicated and gotten my sunday takehome.

a little courtesy goes a long way in this world. sometimes i feel like the ppl that go to the clinic that openly sell pills and their takehome bottles have no right to be there while there is some poor soul out there who is actually trying to get clean. its so wrong.

If you don't mind me guessing - You work at a methadone clinic don't you.

Speaking of methadone clinic staff - IME, in my years as a patient there, I kinda feel bad for the staff (at least at my clinic) as they have to put up with a lot of shit on a daily basis. And by that I mean that pretty much every day, there's a significant amount of people on the program who show up pissed off for the usual reasons. You have your dopesick who are in a bad mood because they haven't come in for days and are feeling like they'd rather die. Then there's a few who belong in a psych ward (schizophrenics), and so forth.

Whatever the reason, it's usually the staff that these patients tend to take their bad moods out on. I've seen so many nurses, counselors, pharmacy techs, etc. come in go in such a short time period. They usually quit without notice. One particularly bad day, I witnessed 3 counselors quit at the same time. A few of the staff still there now look like they're coming in stoned. I don't blame them. Anyways, my point being that I can see why they would talk shit behind our backs. Some of us give them reason to.

Then they have to deal with management, who are usually indifferent when it comes to complaints. "Deal with it" they say (according to one ex-staff I used to talk to). The big wigs are also apparently very greedy. Case in point - one of the toilets which is used to provide a urine sample has been missing the seat for at least a couple of years. They're too cheap to spend money on a fucking toilet seat. People have had to sit on a dirty rim at times as even he toilet paper is very sparingly changed. Sigh.

 

My think you are probably really close, but also probably off a bit. Because I would guess you think I am a nurse. That I am not, but I do encounter them on multiple occasions through out the day. Now I am getting close to basically just coming out and saying exactly what the job is....I figure if you can't tell its something in health care at this point you aren't too quick on the uptake.

 

Shimmer, that website is a very vague idea of what HIPAA deals with. And I know sharing a person's medical information, if you do a job where you are able to view certain information, is very prohibited. And I can't say for sure about Dr's from different practices and hospitals/clinics/offices, but I would assume it would stand to reason that they cannot release the information.

We have the exact same laws here regarding the sharing of a patient's medical information with anyone who is not directly involved with the treatment of a patient. However, health care professionals are allowed to share information with other health care professionals who are treating the same patient if it is within the best interests of the patient's health. For people in the health field here, addiction is like any other sickness that needs to be treated when it interferes with the day to day functionality of a patient (except the way the law deals with it sometimes ), and the information would only be used when attempting to decide the best therapy (i.e. looking for an alternative, non-habit forming medication as opposed to one which has addictive properties for someone with a history of abuse).

Interesting stuff that hasn't really ever crossed my mind, but probably should have. It is much harder to find accurate medical law information as compared to medical information! I am from the US originally, and I was always under the impression that if substance abuse entered your medical record that it stayed there.

 

Speaking of methadone clinic staff - IME, in my years as a patient there, I kinda feel bad for the staff (at least at my clinic) as they have to put up with a lot of shit on a daily basis. And by that I mean that pretty much every day, there's a significant amount of people on the program who show up pissed off for the usual reasons. You have your dopesick who are in a bad mood because they haven't come in for days and are feeling like they'd rather die. Then there's a few who belong in a psych ward (schizophrenics), and so forth.

Have you ever been enrolled in a clinic where people have to pay? (I ask because you're in Canada). The most common drama I've seen in clinics is sick-ass people begging for the clinic to extend their credit because they're broke. The clinics I've gone to will put you on a forced taper of -10 mg each day you don't pay, but I've heard of clinics that just stop serving you altogether.

 

Honestly I am not really 100% sure, I am more informed on what a health care provider cannot tell to people who are non health care providers.

It is hard to say. One thing I can point to is how so many seekers do the doctor shopping thing. If a doctor could get info about you like that, it would basically eliminate the ability of seekers going out and doctor shopping.

 

Have you ever been enrolled in a clinic where people have to pay? (I ask because you're in Canada).

Please bare with me while I try to explain:

The answer is yes... well, for the most part. It's a little complicated here - especially if you don't know the laws regarding Ontario's healthcare system.

The following information is based on my own research and firsthand experiences. Therefore, I could be a little off (e.g. when it comes to seniors, etc.).

All Canadian citizens living in Ontario who are in a methadone maintenance program are automatically covered of all expenses related to the methadone program, such as appointments with the doctor, counselors, medical procedures (surgery), tests (x-rays, CT scans, MRIs), and so forth.

However, the actual cost of the methadone (or any prescription drug) is not covered by OHIP.

Luckily, there are at least two separate types of provincial government funded drug coverage programs in Ontario (AFAIK).

1st is meant for those who are unable to work due to a long term disability, or anyone who is unable to find employment (either because they've tried and not succeeded or they are on short term disability) and applying for and going on welfare (aka Ontario Works).

- This is known as ODB (Ontario Drug Benefits). Anyone who's covered under ODB is also covered 100% for Rx drug related expenses. Technically, ODB recipients must still pay $2 of the usual pharmacy drug dispensing fee, however, most of the time, this fee is waived by the pharmacy (at least IME).

2nd is meant for those who are able to work and are officially employed, but their employer doesn't offer private insurance based drug coverage.

- Known for an unknown reason as Trillium Drug Program (it could be Ontario's official flower, but I'm not sure). Anyone who chooses to register and whose application is accepted (and henceforth covered under Trillium) is also covered 100% for Rx drug related expenses with one condition. Every 3 months, a deductible (based on a percentage of total annual gross pay earned by the employee) must be paid first before Trillium takes over the rest of the cost of any further prescriptions within the three month period.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Assuming you read the aforementioned blabber (and understood it as I'm not very good at explaining these things), there's at least four reasons I can think of as to why a MMT patient might not be able to pay for his/her methadone:

1) - The patient is able to work but is not employed because (s)he refuses to try and find a job (which means no welfare+ODB coverage),

2) - The patient has recently been fired with just cause, and will not be receiving any severance pay, will not be eligible for employment insurance, is broke, and has not yet filed for Welfare coverage.

3) - The patient is disabled and doesn't have private insurance drug coverage either because his/her employer doesn't offer it, or because the patient isn't employed to begin with. The patient also is not aware that drug coverage is available for anyone who is considered disabled.

4) - The patient - whether disabled or not, whether being able to work or not, whether employed or not - doesn't know about the fact that a government funded drug coverage program even exists.

The most common drama I've seen in clinics is sick-ass people begging for the clinic to extend their credit because they're broke. The clinics I've gone to will put you on a forced taper of -10 mg each day you don't pay, but I've heard of clinics that just stop serving you altogether.

My clinic presently has a zero tolerance policy regarding any patient who is unable to afford his/her methadone (and any other medication also dispensed with the methadone).

What happens is, if you walk in to dose, and you are not covered by insurance - whether it's private (employer based) or public (ODB, Trillium) - then they'll tell you that you need to pay before being allowed to drink your methadone. And if you aren't able to afford paying, then they'll refuse to serve you - no exceptions. You're basically fucked. And I think that is so wrong. Especially when you consider that many methadone patients here have also been prescribed moderate to high doses of benzos for a long time.

Some people have tried to go to the hospital afterwards to explain their situation, but the hospitals here don't carry any methadone afaik. And they certainly won't allow the patient to substitute the methadone for an equivalent dosage of another narcotic. At best, they'll give the patient their benzos for the day and then they'll send them home.

They should at least give you a few days to come up with the money. In fact, they used to do that, but apparently a lot of patients end up not paying after their time was up and instead quit the program. That's what I was told anyways.

It's all about the money here. They could care less about the patient if (s)he can't pay. I already voiced my concerns about that to my counselor. I told her it reminds me of when I couldn't pay my drug dealer. He couldn't care less about how dopesick I was if I didn't have any money to pay him.

So yeah, I definitely sympathize with these people. It's just so wrong what the clinic is doing to them. Not even a "feetox". Straight up "fuck off if you can't pay."

I've already petitioned my mayor about this, but I haven't heard anything back yet (and since he's a conservative/republican, I might not get a reply at all).

Sorry for the wall of text.

P.S. - Anyone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about OHIP/ODB/Trillium/etc.

 

i don't think anyone despises heroin addicts but i do think it is the drug they, think of them like some people look at extreme potheads even though potheads don't get addicted they still have haters nobody hates anybody they hate the drug they are doing not the people. i don't like needles, does that mean i hate people who do them? no i just won't touch the things myself.