In this life, everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler. That includes this questionnaire study about marijuana as an “exit” drug for substance abuse. This article hit a nerve because there are issues here I have come up against before. And I mean “against.” I don’t mean to say it isn’t “good science;” it is. I’m talking about the emotional resistance to the idea that detoxifying from a medication can be comfortable, painless, and effective. I see this coming like I see the sun rising in the morning, because I have been to this place. A few years ago, I found myself in an informal banquet room across the parking lot from a hotel type establishment in a touristy part of San Diego. There was a woman rep from the drug company, Hythiam. She wasn’t an ex beauty queen like most reps, but a fairly credentialed therapist who actually knew what she was talking about. My husband was there with me; a younger, chubbier, and more naïve me – therefore, less authoritative.
These Hythiem/Prometa folks had a great schedule of IVs that removed physiological cravings for various substances of abuse, including methamphetamine. Basically, they use safe and older type drugs intravenously for a lovely pharmacological intervention. The cravings stop, and the person does not “need” to use the drug. Neither they nor I was stupid and naive enough to think that was all you had to do. Aftercare was important and I was ready to jump in. They recommended vitamins — I recommended lots of vitamins, high dose, and chelated to cross the blood-brain barrier. But these addicted folks needed “prosthetic lives.” When all you can muster goes to satisfying a craving or a need, there are not many hours left in the day for work or relationships. I helped with this, too. Some people had problems, but they were mostly because of the psychosocial void left when they did not go for drugs, and their inability to fill it. I worked my damnedest with these folks; and like the company, was eager to be accepted into the addiction community. There was this reception, and they had invited people from every substance abuse program in town. I was there and ready to go to bat as the only physician who had experience with these folks locally. Two people showed up. One was an older, fatherly type. The other was a young sidekick who was presumably learning from him. This older guy said something that rings in my ears now. “You got to earn your sobriety.” Read more on Time to Stop Judging and Start Healing…
Filed under medicine, News, Substance Abuse by on Jan 4th, 2013. Comment. 
I have a fable that is obviously too late for Aesop’s collection of same. It is unlikely to make its way into any later anthology. I might as well tell you about a tiny town whose sole virtue that it was on an interstate road that took a lot of people from various parts of California into Las Vegas, that famous refuge for people who are too sober and trying to get rid of excess money, sometimes while getting either married or divorced. Actually Littletown (we will call it that to avoid embarrassment to all two or three law abiding citizens). Had just one more virtue. Their county hired me as a consultant. I did last in that job for a while, even though it covered three different small clinics, each of which needed me just a day or two a week. Since every morning when I woke up, I had to have my husband remind me not only what day of the week it was, but what city and clinic I was supposed to be at. The clinic buildings looked different from one another on the outside, a fact which didn’t help me very much because I ended up working on the inside and usually ate lunch at my desk. The patients in all three clinics were different from those that I had seen prior to that time in my career, for I had not done more than sporadic work with addicts, and there were a fair amount of people on crystal meth. I practiced “from the book” and did the best I could (I always do) and helped some people somewhat, to get treatment and put their lives together. But it was in Littletown, where the stores on Main Street were empty and the only local culture was the yogurt shelf at the (chain) supermarket, that I really learned about crystal meth for the first time. Read more on Once Upon A Time There Was An Explosion…
Filed under Addictions, Substance Abuse by on Jul 20th, 2010. 2 Comments.