Abstinence policy must be abandoned
Re: Kicking the opioid habit takes medical help, say experts, by Brian Cross and Craig Pearson, May 31.
In your excellent series on the local drug crisis, you include the executive director of Brentwood Recovery Home Dan Soulliere’s justification of their policy of excluding opiate addicts taking methadone or Suboxone on the grounds their program is “abstinence based.”
On previous occasions he has claimed opiate substitutes, the safest and most successful form of treatment, is also “against our philosophy.”
We can no longer afford to support treatments based solely on philosophy rather than evidence-based medicine because we know it results in a tenfold increase in the incidence of overdoses.
The truth is the great majority of residential addictions programs in Ontario successfully accommodate patients stabilized on these opiate substitutes. Locally though, thanks to Brentwood, for men it is not available.
If they want us to believe total abstinence, even when this denies them the very medicines we know saves lives, is the goal, why on earth do they also not conduct urine drug screens? This renders them incapable of detecting abstinence anyway. It would be ridiculous for a doctor to treat diabetes while not monitoring a patient’s blood sugar levels and Brentwood’s practice of relying solely on an addict’s assurances about drug consumption is no different.
This region is underfunded per capita for the treatment of addictions and I strongly suggest the Local Integrated Health Network make the substantial funding they award Brentwood conditional on their abandoning this policy.
Such a measure is essential if we are to reduce overdose deaths and the burden on our hospitals. If the House of Sophrosyne can successfully implement such combined treatment for women, why can’t Brentwood?
The time for philosophical considerations and non-evidence based treatment in the pursuit of what we now know to be the dangerous abstinence ideal is long gone and lives depend on our ability to use our limited addiction treatment resources ethically and effectively. Dr. Tony Hammer, Windsor