Study States Providing Daily Drug Doses to Heroin Addicts is Helping Them
An article on heroin addiction from GlobeandMail.com states that giving drug addicts, specifically heroin addicts, daily doses of drugs is helping them.
Most of the hardened heroin addicts who were given free, daily doses of the illegal drug over a 12-month period underwent a positive transformation, committing far fewer crimes while their physical and mental health steadily improved, according to researchers.
Addicts also cut their illegal heroin use by 70 per cent, on average, according to researchers from the North American Opiate Medication Initiative.
The results of the trial, said Martin Schechter, the project’s main investigator, show that hard-core addicts - those with the dimmest chances of recovery - can stabilize their lives when heroin is made free and administered by teams of health-care professionals.
I’m not so sure I buy this.
Personally, two things come to mind.
- That you perpetuate the addict’s delusion that they can use drugs successfully creating a validated wall of denial.
- This seems a bit inhumane. The fact that these medical professionals have essentially written these addicts off as “those with the dimmest chances of recovery.” is disturbing to me. Why? Because they failed the first couple of times? I’ve tried to quit smoking a dozen times - at least - and have not been successful. But, that’s not to say that I haven’t learned anything or that the next time won’t be successful.
I really just don’t get this hospice mentality of trying to help addicts “get by” with their drug use. I understand that perhaps some help is better than no help, but again is there more harm being done than good? The article talks about “improvement in health among participants.” But, it doesn’t say what type of improvements. And, toward the end of the article, Dr. Schechter states that “This is a group that society has written off as beyond hope,” which also seems like a blanket statement that’s not necessarily true. I’ve met scores of people that have not written these addicts off as beyond hope, myself included.
I would love to hear what you (escpecially Treatment Professionals) think about this.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 am
Being an addict myself this sound like a god send. Free Dope!!!!!!!!! but anybody that has been around the program at all know that one is to many and a thousand is never enough what are these dope dealers with a degree going to do provide these addicts with dope the rest of their life and cheat them out the peace that recovery brings just so they can get their name in a magazine.