The counseling requirement is because you can't just treat addiction by throwing fucking painkillers at people
Yeah, I’m sure the guy who’s has been on methadone for a decade will really be transformed by the counseling requirement they put in to make a buck, come on.
. Addicts love Subutex and methadone and just taking the drug typically just switches their addiction,
Depends. Some addicts take it to get high, or at least to ward off withdrawals and get high off something else
Others take it and either taper out over time, or stay at their dosage without getting high and can rebuild their life.
the counseling requirement is so they actually start taking steps to change their shitty lives and improve instead of just go from using illegal drugs to legal ones.
You can’t counsel people into not being addicts unless they want to.
(And even if they’re still addicts with no interest in getting clean, at least methadone and suboxone means less crime and misery.)
The gold standard of non-pharmaceutical addiction treatments: The kind that doctors get is pretty effective. Success rates are even better than for suboxone.
But that usually means six months or 12 months of in patient rehab.
Regular addicts get 8 weeks if they’re lucky, because the whole point of addiction treatment isn’t really to get addicts clean, but federal mandates, addiction jobs and the bottom line of clinics.
Methadone CAN work.
In patient, non medical treatment CAN work.
What doesn’t work is the current system. If it was anything else than junkies, we would chuck it in the trash and start over, because we spend tens of billions and the actual success rates are like 30%.
There is a lot of abuse and waste behind the scenes not just in addiction treatment but all medicine - you're not going to see that change because everyone has some stake in it and the cost of expecting some waste is less than fucking with a system that keeps people alive and functional in society. JD Vance probably credits addiction treatment for his mom being alive right now and part of his familys life instead of dead from an overdose. I'd rather some of my tax dollars get wasted while others help Americans improve their lives than see a single cent go overseas so sand people can bomb each other.
Oh I definitely agree on the last part. I’m just saying, the whole system is fucked, we spend huge amounts of money and not that many people actually get better.
Not sure what the answer is, but it’ll be interesting to see if folks like Vance or RFK jr. have any new, original ideas.