Most people with opioid addictions don’t get the right treatment: medication-assisted therapy

We have been treating people with opioid addictions for more than 30 years. It doesn’t make sense to us that, as the United States finally gears up to fight this epidemic, most clinicians are using the wrong approaches, like brief detox or being discharged to home or the street after a near-lethal overdose.

Proper treatment for opioid addiction substantially reduces overdoses and can markedly improve lives, and even save them. Yet most individuals with this brain disease aren’t getting any kind of treatment. And those who do get treated generally undergo detox — withdrawal from opioids and ultimately complete cessation of all opioid-related drugs. Not only does detox cause terrible withdrawal symptoms, but it doesn’t work for most people, and they start