substance use treatment – Opiate Nation

If my son were alive today during the Covid-19 pandemic…..

I would fear for his life more than ever.

“Drug Overdoses Soaring: Suspected overdoses nationally jumped 18% in March, 29% in April, 42% in May, data from ambulance teams, hospitals, and police shows.”

As a young man in America who wanted more than anything to be free of his deadly heroin addiction, how would he be weathering the Covid-19 pandemic?

“The drug-overdose-and-death epidemic already was hurting communities before COVID-19, but during the pandemic there have been reports from every region of the country on spikes in opioid-related calls to first responders, visits to emergency rooms, fentanyl and tainted-drug-related overdoses. There also have been challenges to accessing sterile needle and syringe and exchange services.”

Woman of Substances

In 1979, the novel A Woman of Substance was published. It was the first in a series of seven portraying the substances and schemes, the means and maneuvers of three generations of a retail empire. Being “a woman of substance” is considered a great compliment for a woman who aspires to be influential, a woman of power, a positive influence.

In a clever spin on this phrase, journalist and author Jenny Valentish has written Woman of Substances. I picked it up last year while in Melbourne, Australia and I couldn’t put it down. Her narrative flair for relaying her personal experiences while presenting scientific findings on addictions of all sorts is extremely engaging for women – and men.

Jenny’s nutshell:

A girl falls down a rabbit hole. She obeys every ‘drink me’, ‘eat me’ prompt and meets all sorts of freaky characters. Chaos ensues. Then she wakes up and exploits her position as a journalist to ask experts what that was all about.

Although it is not a memoir per se, her blatant honesty and self-deprecation about her past and her choices is revealing, while not glamorizing the depths to which her addictions took her. She interviewed 35 clinicians, counsellors, doctors and academics about their fields of expertise and shares her personal experiences of her up and down road to recovery and sobriety.

The chapters cover: The roles of temperament and impulsivity in addiction. Hitching adolescent identity to substances. Internalized misogyny as a contributing factor. The relationship between substance use, eating disorders and self-harm. Sexual assault and spiking. The impact of childhood trauma on the brain and behavior. Related foibles, such as gambling, theft, compulsive buying and compulsive sexual behavior. Self-medicating mental illness and PTSD. AA and other forms of treatment. The ways in which research and treatment is geared towards the male experience.

My husband, daughter, and I had the privilege of meeting with Jenny for lunch in Melbourne last week. She is as real in person as she is in print. We discussed current trends of drug addiction in Australia along with recovery and family help groups she is connected with.

What reviewers are saying:

“Raw, revealing, at times heartbreaking, but searingly honest and aimed to support anyone who is wondering if they will ever recover from addiction.”

“This book taught me things I wasn’t expecting about the landscape of substance use. You don’t have to be a spectacular comet of crazy like the young Valentish to find something of yourself in these pages. I can’t imagine there isn’t a young person, friend or parent who won’t get something important from reading this book.”

“Like a tour guide in a foreign land, Valentish waves a flag and provides a path back from the abyss. This is an enormously compelling, confronting and informative piece on addiction and recovery from a female perspective.”

Ultimately, Jenny show us that being a Woman of Substances keeps you from being influential, powerful, and a positive influence. As we told her, we are proud of her determination to truthfully relay her failures and her persistence in walking the uphill road to wellness and freedom. They will assure her place as a powerful and positive influence on this generation.

www.womanofsubstances.com

You can purchase Woman of Substances on Amazon or at your local bookseller.

Finding Help Thru The Maze

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.