The number of people who are addicted to opioids in the USA is still growing. Just in 2016, nearly 64 000 people died because of it.
Heroin
By Psychonaught Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons
But a working treatment for opioid addiction exists. It is called MAT (medication-assisted treatment) and it works by giving drugs that help you overcome the need for another pill while reducing the withdrawal symptoms at the same time. The problem is that only a very small number of people have access to this treatment. Based on a study published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine only half of the private companies that help offer them and only one-third of patients get them in reality.
The reasons for that are several. Not enough understanding how these drugs help by the public, stigmatization of the problem or even some federal and state laws. Some people, for example, think that this treatment is just replacing one addiction with another. But that is just not true. For example, naltrexone blocks both the euphoric and sedative effects of opioids so their consumption will not give you a high.
When methadone and buprenorphine got more easily accessible in Baltimore from 1995 to 2009 the number of people who died from overdosing on heroin decreased by roughly 50 %. But methadone is only available at specialized clinics in the US and those aren’t particularly popular as usually, they are not in the best districts. This leads to a situation where getting hard opioids like heroin is easier than getting the treatment.
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