I’m responding to Kendrick Williams’ June 9 letter regarding the potential of having a Methadone clinic in Snohomish County. (“Methadone clinics: They do more damage than good”). Most citizens are unfamiliar with addiction recovery medicine and may mistake his words for fact when they are anything but fact.
Methadone is just one of a few replacement therapy drugs being used right now. A semi-new drug Buprenorphine was clinically tested here at Everett’s Providence Hospital this last year with very positive results. This new drug, and others like it, could limit human suffering, save money in our health care and judicial system and save lives. This is real progress in an area that has been static for too long. Replacement therapy (methadone) may not have worked for Mr. Williams, but it has been extremely effective for many addicts the world over. What works for one may not work for another.
Also, people do not get high off of their daily doses, as Mr. Williams stated. If the drug is properly prescribed, the patient should not be getting high. However, often in the early stages of treatment addicts will exaggerate their withdrawal symptoms so clinic doctors will erroneously over-prescribe the medicine. This is not the fault of doctors or the drugs, but the addict who will not yet come clean with his addiction. Usually a good match between a patient and counselor will settle this issue.
No replacement therapy clinics in Snohomish County? What then? AA, NA? These and other 12-step programs preach abstinence but have an awful success rate. The overall success rate for quitting any kind of addiction in our country is 15 percent. AA has a success rate of 5 percent over the long haul. And 2 percent of those will go back to using after the first year. This is empirical data, not anecdotal. AA clearly does not work for most people and is merely a Band-Aid. However, it is firmly entrenched in America’s addiction recovery system and is keeping drugs like Methadone, Buprenorphine, Oralamm and others like it away from areas like ours that need an alternative to the status quo.
We cannot afford to be exclusionary or stubborn with our approach to treating addicts and addiction. Nor should we play ostrich with the obvious drug problems we have in Snohomish County. (See The Herald’s big special on methamphetamine back in May). We have a drug problem here in Snohomish County. We need all the help we can get.
Everett
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