Methadone: A Flicker Of Light In The Dark
Methadone: A Flicker Of Light In The Dark
Methadone: A Flicker Of Light In The Dark
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Methadone: A Flicker Of Light In The Dark

To provide a better understanding of the very important role methadone plays in the treatment of addiction.
 
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 KITSAP METHADONE CLINIC PROPOSED TO TREAT GROWING NUMBER OF OPIATE ADDICTS

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lilgirllost
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lilgirllost


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Age : 51
Location : live in Louisiana but attend MMT clinic in Tx
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Registration date : 2009-05-25

KITSAP METHADONE CLINIC PROPOSED TO TREAT GROWING NUMBER OF OPIATE ADDICTS Empty
PostSubject: KITSAP METHADONE CLINIC PROPOSED TO TREAT GROWING NUMBER OF OPIATE ADDICTS   KITSAP METHADONE CLINIC PROPOSED TO TREAT GROWING NUMBER OF OPIATE ADDICTS EmptyMon Mar 14, 2011 11:22 am

Kitsap methadone clinic proposed to treat growing number of opiate addicts

KITSAP METHADONE CLINIC PROPOSED TO TREAT GROWING NUMBER OF OPIATE ADDICTS 0313_l10
A patient takes his opiate treatment at the Evergreen Treatment Services in Seattle. Behind the glass is Tom Covert, a registered nurse that administers the methadone. The methadone comes to the clinic in powder form, and nurses there add blue food coloring and liquefy it.

BREMERTON — The small, round pill of morphine Trevor Mercer swallowed revealed itself as an exhilarating, seemingly perfect high.

He had dabbled in drugs before. But he found his drug of choice when he ingested that pill when he was in his late teens.

Methadone treatment. “It was like, ‘Where have you been all my life,’” Mercer recalled.

Time was in his hands: he had a job, a girlfriend, a drug habit.

Eventually, Mercer turned to heroin, a cheaper alternative to morphine with a quicker high. But like any drug, his tolerance began to build. His money started running short and the addiction started taking its toll on his body, evidenced by deep circles under his eyes, track marks on his arms, and an unhealthy weight loss.


He stopped using heroin to get high and started taking it just to feel normal.

He knew he had to stop. But even a run-in with the law and drug treatment didn’t thwart his addiction. After stints of being clean of heroin, he’d go back to the drug.

At 24, all the abundance of time he once had was gone.


The birth of his son mere months away, Mercer could not shake the cravings of his addiction, the fear of withdrawal, with perpetual flulike symptoms.

“It seemed impossible,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Of all places, a lifeline came from a fellow user while both were replenishing their supply from a dealer.

There was a clinic in Seattle, Mercer learned, that supplied methadone. The treatment would substitute his heroin addiction for another, longer-acting opiate.

It was worth a try, he felt.

EPIDEMIC OF OPIATE ABUSE

The surge in prescription drug addiction, combined with a resurgence of black-tar heroin, has local health officials calling for the kind of treatment Mercer found.

Scott Lindquist, physician and director of the Kitsap County Health District, believes a methadone clinic could help what has become an epidemic of opiate abuse.

“It’s a huge public health problem,” Lindquist said. “It’s a burden on the whole county.”

He acknowledges the drug is a longer-acting but still addictive opiate, but he believes in its ability to stabilize people, giving them an opportunity to seek a productive life — not just their next fix.

Opiate addicts face an uphill battle: about 80 percent will relapse into using again each year, said David Beck, medical director for Kitsap Mental Health and a methadone clinic in Olympia run by the same nonprofit as the one in Seattle that Mercer attends.

“We’re no different than anyplace else,” Beck said. “But we have a serious need that’s not being addressed.”

That problem is the longtime opiate user who is undeterred by the law, unaided by abstinence-based drug treatment programs, and unyielding in doing whatever it takes to get heroin or other opiates.

For some people, the brain is forever changed by opiate use. Receptors that trigger happiness and regulate mood are permanently damaged.

Methadone can quiet those receptors, Beck said.

“The opiate receptor demands your respect,” Beck said. “You have to stop that receptor before you can start modeling behavior.”


MANAGING A CHRONIC DISEASE

KITSAP METHADONE CLINIC PROPOSED TO TREAT GROWING NUMBER OF OPIATE ADDICTS 0313_l11
Trevor Mercer plays with his son Jackson, 2. After getting methadone treatment, Mercer has been able to working full-time and raise his son.

Two years have passed since the now 26-year-old Mercer began methadone maintenance treatment. He’s a father of a 2-year-old boy, owns a house in the Seabeck area where he lives with his longtime girlfriend, and works as a cook at a local restaurant.

Methadone gave him an alternative.

Going on methadone meant substituting his needle-shooting heroin addiction for a shot-glass sized dose of another opiate — one not intended to get him high but instead to ward off withdrawals.

Mercer, who lived in Seattle for a time, believes he was lucky the city had a methadone clinic. Even when he moved back to Kitsap County, he took the ferry six days a week to get his daily dose of methadone.

While some, like Mercer, have made the trek to Seattle or Tacoma to participate in methadone treatment, not everyone can afford the time and money it takes to get there.

Ron Jackson would like to change that.

Jackson is director of Evergreen Treatment Services and chairman of the Washington State Opioid Treatment Providers. His nonprofit is interested in setting up shop in Bremerton.

Jackson equates using methadone to treat chronic opiate addiction to giving someone with high blood pressure a prescription for it. The high blood pressure patient starts with a pill, and then they can get at the root problem — eating less fatty foods and getting more exercise, for instance. An opiate addict starts with methadone and once their life is stabilized, they can begin counseling and move toward a more productive life.

“This is just a management tool for a chronic disease,” Jackson said. “And that chronic disease is called opioid addiction.”

Evergreen Treatment Services treats about 1,500 in the Puget Sound area: about 900 in the Seattle clinic near Safeco Field, about 200 people through van that goes around Seattle, and another 350 in Olympia.


Jackson envisions a clinic serving about 350 patients if he were to open one here.

Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent is aware of efforts to locate a clinic in Bremerton and is supportive of the effort.

She said she’s seen how it can successfully stabilize people’s lives.

“I’m behind it, 100 percent,” she said.

METHADONE V. COLD TURKEY

Using methadone treat opiate addiction is not new. The drug was developed in pre-World War II Germany and first used to treat opiate addicts in 1960s New York, where heroin was an epidemic that was spiking the crime rate.

Since it was first used to treat addiction in the 1960s, the number of patients on methadone maintenance remained mostly steady. But in recent years, it has increased, from about 170,000 patients in 1998 to 270,000 today.

There are about 1,200 methadone maintenance clinics in the country, according to Mark Parrino, founder and president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence.

If a methadone clinic comes to Kitsap County, bridges will be built between it and more traditional treatment programs.

Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Jay Roof has run the county’s drug court since it began more than a decade ago. It reduces sentences for those who agree to get treatment and stay free of drugs, including methadone.

“No drugs means no drugs,” he said. “The perception is, ‘Why are heroin addicts able to maintain when a meth addict isn’t?’”

But he said the court is willing to re-examine its policies.

Lisa Romwall, director of the Kitsap Recovery Center, fears a new clinic could divert money from other centers in operation, which survive on a patchwork system of government grants.

“There’s only so much money to go around,” she said.

But Jackson insists that he wouldn’t open a methadone clinic in Kitsap County if it interfered with current treatment options.

Bert Furuda, Kitsap County’s director of health and human services, doesn’t believe it will interfere with funding.

“In all of our previous discussions regarding a potential methadone clinic, it was clear that any support was based upon additional federal or state funding,” he said, “and that it would not be at the expense of treatment programs within our current delivery system.”

COUNSELING A PIECE OF TREATMENT

It was not long after Trevor Mercer began methadone maintenance treatment that he recommended it to his friend and fellow user, Dodger Coleman, 27.

Coleman completed Kitsap County’s drug court, went through months of inpatient treatment and emerged, like Mercer, with his body yearning for opiates. In one year, he went through six jobs, each time working into employment, then falling back into heroin and losing it.


Opiates, he said, “were all I knew in how to cope with the stress.”

The two men often journey to Evergreen Treatment Services in Seattle together.

The methadone comes to the clinic in powder form, and nurses there add blue food coloring and liquefy it. Six days a week, patients show their ID to a nurse who stands at what looks like a bank teller window. They get their dose and chase it with some sweet lemonade to hide the taste.

They come to an industrial area on Airport Way near the stadiums and Interstate 5, a machine shop-looking kind of place off the beaten path but well connected by buses. The building once housed hazardous garbage from a waste-management company.

Each dose is prescribed based on the needs of the person. The higher the tolerance, the more they need to feel the effects.

“We want to offset the withdrawal,” Jackson said, using the example of a smoker using a nicotine patch. “But we also have to make sure they’re not leaving loaded.”

Addicts get counseling, from once a week to once a month, to ensure they’re getting on the right track. They’re also drug-tested and given a Breathalyzer test up to twice a week to ensure they’re on the right path.

“This is medication-assisted treatment,” Jackson is quick to point out. “This is not medication-alone treatment.”

For some, treatment is short, a few months to wean off an opiate. For others, it may go on indefinitely. Jackson recently interviewed a woman in New York who has been on a methadone replacement program for 43 years. She’s 83 and “sharp as a tack,” he said.

Coleman has established a stable life. He lives in East Bremerton, is engaged, is raising a 5-year-old son and is training to become a welder at Olympic College, where he’s maintained a 4.0 GPA.

“I can be a participating member of society,” he said.



Original Link: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/mar/12/kitsap-methadone-clinic-proposed-treat-growing-num/#ixzz1GaCKxH2l
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