What If My Child Isn’t Motivated to Get Treatment for Addiction?
Suggesting Treatment to a Loved One
Intervention – a Starting Point
Drug Use, Stigma, and the Proactive Contagions to Reduce Both
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Formal peer recovery support interventions involve services, guidance, and mentorship by specially trained individuals with lived experience of substance use and/or mental illness. This type of support may be especially useful to people with co-occurring substance use and psychiatric disorders who often face unique challenges initiating and sustaining recovery. In this study, the researchers examined whether adding a peer-led recovery support program to a skills training program improved mental health and substance use outcomes for people with co-occurring psychosis and substance use disorder.
The researchers examined the effect of skills training and a peer-led social engagement program on psychosis symptoms, social functioning, substance use, and healthcare utilization among people with co-occurring psychosis and substance use disorder.
The researchers found that both the skills training only and skills training plus Engage conditions led to reduced positive psychotic symptoms (short term), increased levels of self-criticism (long term); improved social functioning (short term); reduced hospital readmissions (short and long term); and reduced number of days drinking alcohol (short term). Interestingly, the skills training only condition reduced negative psychotic symptoms (short term).
Most importantly, adding the peer-led social engagement program to the skills training condition led to increased duration of outpatient treatment (short term); reduced number of days experiencing alcohol-related problems (long term); and increased rating of importance of getting treatment for alcohol problems (short term).
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What Is Fentanyl: Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, a man-made drug designed to mimic the effects of natural opiates like heroin and opium. It is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and is prescribed to treat severe pain after surgery or during cancer treatment.
The drug is available in several forms and under many different brand names. It can be administered by injection, as a patch, and in the form of a sublingual tablet.
Affects of Fentanyl on the Brain: Medical professionals prescribe Fentanyl to patients suffering from chronic pain or flare-ups of unbearable pain despite ongoing narcotic treatment, called breakthrough pain. The substance behaves similarly to heroin and morphine by working with the brain’s opioid receptors. The opioid centers are areas in the brain that manage pain and emotions.
The brain works by binding Fentanyl to the opioid receptors, causing dopamine levels in the brain to increase and induce euphoria, relaxation, and contentment. The effects of Fentanyl come on rapidly but are short-lived, generally lasting only one to two hours.
Even when used as prescribed, Fentanyl side-effects can include:
- Mood changes
- Headaches
- Coldness
- Drowsiness
- Depression
- Dry mouth
- Stomach pain
- Indigestion
- Back pain
- Itching
- Decreased libido
- Agitation
- Nausea and vomiting
- Chest pain
- Seizures
- Diarrhea
- Shortness of breath
Fentanyl harbors a massive addiction potential because of its strength and pharmacology, whether sourced legally or illegally.
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“My daily habit was from the minute I woke up, to the minute I passed out, all I wanted to do was get ‘high’. I was kicked out of school. Could not keep a job, I was kicked out of my house. I didn’t have any money; the only money I could get was what I stole from my friends…”
But 12 Step Recovery program trained him for success.
Three principles were so important for me not to simply deal with my drug problem but be successful in life…
- Authenticity
- Surrender outcome
- Do uncomfortable work.
(Be vulnerable – Be Transparent – Tell the Truth – Surrender – Be Accountable)
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Will lost almost everything: jobs, his driver's license, his car, his marriage and his home. He found enough temporary work to pay rent on a room, ate at soup kitchens, and stole and resold goods for cash.
"Feeding that addiction," he says. "Feeding that monster."
We're only using Will's first name because future landlords or employers might not take him based on his record.
The game changer
One morning almost three years ago, with no heroin and no money to buy any, Will went into withdrawal. This former basketball player, once in top shape, dragged himself down the street searching for a deal. He had some crack that he could sell. The buyer was an undercover cop.
"That was the game changer," Will says. Instead of prison, Will was sent to a daily probation program in Massachusetts called Community Corrections.
(Dalgarno Institute comment: We speak in pejorative terms of the ‘War Against Drugs’, (BTW – one which Australia never fought) and this meme has conjured disempowering caricatures that have been harnessed wonderfully by an ever emboldened pro-drug and other anarchist groups to peddle their notions of cultural reform.
However, any ‘war’ against all community and individual destroying behaviours is never a futile one (thought at times it may appear a losing one – especially when constantly sabotaged from within). When it comes to other such destructive elements; we don’t stop fighting assault, rape, road toll, theft, vandalism, etc, just because we haven’t eliminated or made limited in-roads into stopping these behaviours. No, we continue, but not in a mindless repetition of one misused, and consequently, struggling tactic.
Ernest Hemmingway was right when he said, “Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”
Overcoming a society, community, family and individual destroying ‘enemy’ requires creative diligence, not just belligerence. There are many tactics in a war that can subdue an enemy. It is important to restate that in the War for the brains our youth, the health of our families and the safety or our community, the prohibitive law, can and must be used as a Judicial Educator, not a punitive incarcerator. One does not have to weaken statutes or penalties – in fact this will only give greater strength to this scourge. However, diversionary strategies that empower and equip options for change and the facilitated exit from drug use, is one of the best weapons in the legislative arsenal.
Whilst one may agree that a doubling down on a ‘one hand tied behind the back’ and non-restorative mechanism may continue to bear only little fruit, ‘cutting that arm’ off, rather than re-tasking the law and harnessing it with drug use recovery; supply, and most importantly, demand reduction mechanisms, is the better way forward for all our communities.)
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The Dubbo region will benefit from a $31.5 million investment in drug rehabilitation and access to justice.
Deputy Premier John Barilaro today announced the NSW Government will invest $27.9 million over the coming four financial years to expand the NSW Drug Court to Dubbo, on top of the recent $3.6 million upgrade to the city’s courthouse.
“The Drug Court is a tried and tested silver bullet to help address the abuse of highly addictive and dangerous illicit drugs that continue to cripple our communities.” For compete story Drug Court expands to Dubbo | Mirage News
- Woman who fought meth addiction says Drug Treatment Court saved her life.
- Combining Medications With 12-Step Model Treatment Improves OUD Outcomes
- Prevalence and pathways of recovery from drug and alcohol problems in the United States population: Implications for practice, research, and policy
- Cannabis Use, Opioid M.A.T. and Suicidal Ideation – Not a good combination.