Different drug treatment approach needed
I couldn’t help but respond to the recent front-page article in the Cape Breton Post (‘There is no treatment back home,’ Sept. 8) regarding the lack of treatment for people seeking help for drug use.
I have recently returned to the area for employment after being away for 10 years and I am sad to see how the shortage of doctors is affecting people on methadone, people seeking treatment and people like myself who have to travel to Halifax monthly to have a methadone prescription written.
Although I am stable and employed, I still face the stigma associated with my past and the medication I am prescribed. Also frustrating are all the new restrictions our province is enacting.
Doctors are not to blame for the illicit drug trade. And people with chronic pain should not have to suffer/endure a decrease in daily doses when they are maintaining productive lives at a stable dose.
The more restrictions they impose, the more drugs will be accessed via the illicit drug market which is dangerous and counterproductive given all the evidence that supports more low-threshold harm reducing programs and services.
Halifax also had a terrible waitlist for methadone until the good folks at Direction 180 purchased mobile units that drive into each community daily to meet the need. I could see the same working very well here if only we could find the right doctors and nurses willing to make it happen.
People are dying because they can’t get on methadone fast enough. There is a six-month waitlist for ‘opioid replacement therapy.’ With the shortage of doctors on our Island, I understand that they are working to capacity, but we are in the midst of a real crisis.
Aside from the fact that fentanyl and other poison opioids have made it into the illicit drug market locally, struggling with the physical and mental hell of withdrawal from opiates is such a debilitating grind that one can’t begin to understand without having experienced it yourself.
That awful feeling is what brings people to doing all the desperate acts associated with drug use. It’s expensive and painful on so many levels and the destitution you feel when trying to access help to no avail just contributes to the downward spiral.
Just recently another young man, 21 years old, overdosed and died.
When Portugal decriminalized/legalized drugs and took the money out of enforcement and put it into health care and support services, the crime rate plummeted and people got well. I sure wish we could make the same type of investment in our people here. The majority of folks who develop problems with drugs are trying to escape thoughts and feelings of trauma and abuse they have endured or have debilitating pain from injuries.
We are not criminals. They are crimes of necessity and survival and destitution. Professionals need to start listening to what people need to get well, or nothing will change. People need support and encouragement and sometimes opiates for the rest of their lives. Provide this medication in a safe supportive manner and people will get their lives together, but regulate and dictate and stigmatize and people will continue to feel excluded and hopeless.
Something has to change to improve access to what people need without the barriers, stigma and lack of choice. Giulia Di Giorgio North Sydney