My husband and I just returned from a wonder-full vacation in Europe. We felt privileged and blessed in every way. Although we were enjoying our new experiences together, our son’s death from a heroin overdose was never far below the surface. We carry a lingering pain, knowing that although we tried our best to help our son, the three of us could never seem to find our way through the maze of dead ends and wrong turns for the right treatment for his increasing dependence on the substance that would eventually take his life.
While we were in the Netherlands, my husband, a pharmaceutical scientist, was contacted by a client and asked to analyze data from a drug study that was being conducted 15 minutes away from where we were. The human study, in those with opioid addiction and the control group without, is searching for a better medical approach to help addicts when they want to become clean and sober.
Half a world away from home we were reminded of people struggling with opioid addiction. And half a world away, there is still shame and stigma attached to being an addict, and there are parents, families, and friends living with the pain of watching someone they love not actually living life but hanging on from day to day, never knowing when their loved one will be another statistic in the world-wide epidemic in which there are few viable options for help.
The ongoing opioid crisis has drawn attention to the widening gap between the high need and limited access to substance use treatment in the United States. A recent Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report found that of 21.7 million Americans in need of substance use disorder treatment, only 2.35 million received treatment at a specialty facility. This led to a new study recently published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, where several researchers and physicians searched for the predominant barriers for addicts receiving treatment (https://scienmag.com/study-looks-at-barriers-to-getting-treatment-for-substance-use-disorders).
Four broad themes were identified:
Patient Eligibility – Difficulties in determining patient eligibility for a particular and appropriate treatment center.
Treatment Capacity – Even if a patient is eligible, providers have trouble finding out whether space is available.
Knowledge of Treatment Options – Health care providers may not understand the levels of available and appropriate care for substance use treatment.
Communication – Difficulties in communication between referring providers and treatment facilities contribute to delays to starting treatment. The need for direct referral – “from the emergency department to a bed” – is particularly high for patients with opioid use disorders.
“Access to substance use disorder treatment is often a maze that can be difficult to navigate for both providers and patients,” Dr. Blevins and coauthors write. Yes, and it was even more so for those of us who found our teenager using heroin in the early 2000’s. No one was talking, our doctors had no experience with opioid addiction, treatment options were extremely hard to find and expensive, and for many of us, not covered by insurance.
For those of us who tried so hard to maneuver our way through the maze, we continue to live with the pain from feeling that we failed our son in a million different ways, while we tried so hard to get it right. May our being open about our experiences help those of you still living a tension-filled life find the answers you need to get you through the maze quickly so there may be a different outcome for you or your loved one.
Opiate Nation 