History and Origin Continued

When opiate addiction hit the suburbs and small mid western towns, it rolled through like a freight train, hitting the addict and dragging them and everyone who loved them down the tracks with it. The inner city addicts, like myself had dealt with this disease and its aftermath for years. The suburban and upper class communities had know idea what was in store for them. They had dealt with all the other abused substances, but not opiates on this magnitude. Any addict will tell you there is everything else, then there is heroin. Once there are opiates, there is nothing else. The very first reaction is ” I need help you need help someone call a rehab!” Most of the people getting addicted in these rural areas had very good insurance… not state, but private insurance. They have been paying for the majority of treatment for over 20 years. When that started the failure rate went from 50% to 80%, all because no one looked back at the treatment standard. Everybody just ran in different directions looking for a solution. The current treatment plan, which is 30 years old, was then and is now completely wrong, not flawed, but wrong. Heroin and opiate addiction and its’ treatment should never have been in this category, It is a separate disease and it needs its own specific treatment plan. Currently in this country you have addicts ranging in age from 16 to 60 in three age groups… 16 to 20, 25 to 40 and 45 to 60, which I call generations. Each one has its own issues specific to their group. 95% of them have one thing in common, they all became addicted the same way and all have either gone through rehab, some up to 10 times and in the middle of this rehab cycle or just starting out in this cycle, we don’t have an epidemic spreading across this country….. oh people are becoming addicted everyday, but what you really have is a cycling effect that has been going on for 20 years within the rehab system! I’m trying to be as unbiased as possible in all of this but I get frustrated when it comes to this point. the addict has been blamed for relapsing time and time again, Loved ones are left thinking they were not strong enough to beat this. The addict does have huge responsibility for there own recovery, but you have to get the brain to a chemical base line before this can happen. There is not a lot of relapse happening here, but there is an awful lot of rehab happening, economically insurance companies will spend 70 billion dollars this year and over the last 20 years its cost close to a half trillion dollars and all that money has been spent on a three legged horse that hasn’t even got out of the starting gate for 30 years.