Tag Archives: Dying To Be Free

10/23/18

Feuding Ideologies, Part 3

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“Dying To Be Free,” an article on the opioid addiction crisis, was well written and effectively communicated its message. That message was that abstinence-based treatment “didn’t work well for opioid addicts.” Medication-assisted treatment (MAT), especially with Suboxone, should be the standard of care. Nominated for a Pulitzer, “Dying To Be Free” was said to have influenced “a series of state and federal policy changes” away from abstinence to embrace MAT. But it has a glaring blind spot with regard to MAT, particularly Suboxone.

Pragmatically speaking, abstinent-based treatment and MAT need to learn to work together in order to effectively address the opioid addiction crisis in the U.S. “Dying To Be Free” systematically put these two approaches as being at odds with each other. It suggested we need to choose between the two, and argued that we should choose MAT. In order to support Suboxone MAT, it failed to acknowledge several serious concerns with Suboxone and other MATs. In this sense the persuasive rhetoric of the article had a blind spot.

In what follows, I hope to shine a light on what was missed with regard to Suboxone and other MATs. My intent is to bring to light the potential cons with Suboxone treatment in order to counterbalance the many pros found in “Dying To Be Free.” In order to make a truly informed addiction treatment choice both the strengths and weaknesses, the pros and cons, need to be known and understood.

On September 20, 2017, Scott Gottlieb, the FDA Commissioner released a statement that said combined with counseling and behavioral therapies, MAT (medication-assisted treatment) was one of the main pillars of the federal response to the opioid epidemic. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), it cuts the risk of death from all causes in half among individuals who use MAT to treat their opioid use disorder. But methadone and buprenorphine are themselves opioids and when they are combined with benzodiazepines or other central nervous system (CNS) depressants, there is a risk of serious side effects, such as difficulty breathing, coma and death.

Since the harm caused by untreated opioid addiction can outweigh these risks, the FDA advised against withholding buprenorphine or methadone-based MAT from individuals taking benzodiazepines or other CNS drugs. Nevertheless, the agency is requiring changes to the MAT drug labels to help decrease the risks of combining these drugs. Heath care professionals should educate patients about the risks of combined use, “including overdose and death.” They should taper the benzodiazepine or CNS depressant to discontinuation, if possible. They should verify the diagnosis if a patient was prescribed these drugs for anxiety or insomnia, and consider other treatment options for these conditions.

The new labeling recommends that health care providers develop a treatment plan that closely monitors any concomitant use of these drugs, and carefully taper the use of benzodiazepines, while considering other treatment options to address mental health conditions that the benzodiazepines might have been initially prescribed to address.

The FDA prescribing information for buprenorphine already notes that: “significant respiratory depression and death has occurred in association with buprenorphine,” particularly when it is used intravenously (IV) or in combination benzodiazepines or other CNS depressants, including alcohol. “Many, but not all post-marketing reports regarding coma and death associated with the concomitant use of buprenorphine and benzodiazepines involved misuse by self-injection.” Unintentional exposure of buprenorphine to children, which can cause possibly fatal respiratory depression, was warned against. It also notes the potential for dependence:

Buprenorphine is a partial agonist at the mu-opioid receptor and chronic administration produces physical dependence of the opioid type, characterized by withdrawal signs and symptoms upon abrupt discontinuation or rapid taper. The withdrawal syndrome is typically milder than seen with full agonists and may be delayed in onset. Buprenorphine can be abused in a manner similar to other opioids. This should be considered when prescribing or dispensing buprenorphine in situations when the clinician is concerned about an increased risk of misuse, abuse, or diversion.

Buprenorphine and methadone are both opioids, with the potential for physical dependence. Therefore, they are both diverted from legitimate medical treatment for illicit use. Buprenorphine is a Schedule III controlled substance, while methadone is a Schedule II controlled substance. Buprenorphine is said to have a tolerance ceiling with respiratory depression, meaning it has a lower potential when used alone to cause respiratory depression and death. Given that buprenorphine is a partial agonist, its physical euphoria is less intense than other opioids. But tolerance to many of the effects will develop with prolonged and repeated use.

Methadone was first synthesized by the Nazis, who never brought it into widespread use because of side effects, which included its addictive potential. After WWII, the Americans took control of the factory where methadone, then known as dolophine or polamidon, had been invented. A 1947 study demonstrated its addictive potential, warning if the manufacture and use was not controlled, “addiction to it could become a serious health problem.” See “The Consequences of Ignoring the Past,” for more on methadone.

The addictive potential and the abuse potential for buprenorphine or methadone was not readily discussed in “Dying To Be Free.” Nor were the above-noted concerns of mixing buprenorphine and CNS depressants. The author, Jason Cherkis, did say that neither drug was a miracle cure. “Suboxone blocks both the effects of heroin withdrawal and an addict’s craving and, if used properly, does it without causing intoxication.” But saying both drugs were comparable to “the insulin that a diabetic needs to live” was inaccurate and disingenuous. Chronic, long term use could lead to a lifelong dependency.

There is no getting around this. Chronic, long term use of buprenorphine and methadone produces physical dependence. A too rapid taper or an abrupt discontinuation will produce symptoms of withdrawal. Extended, chronic use over months or years could result in a lifelong reliance on the medication to avoid the discontinuation or withdrawal crisis—and the danger of returning to active illicit opioid use. In the documentary Methadonia, about methadone maintenance in New York City, one individual referred to methadone as “liquid handcuffs.”

Another disturbing blind spot in Dying To Be Free” was its discussion of a 2009 study, “Illicit Use of Buprenorphine/Naloxone Among Injecting and Noninjecting Opioid Users.” Cherkis cited it, stating the majority of addicts surveyed were buying Suboxone on the black market “in an attempt to get sober.” 74% of those surveyed said they were using Suboxone to “ease withdrawal symptoms; 64% said they were using it because they couldn’t afford drug treatment. “Even when purchased on the black market, regardless of the intentions of the user, the medication works as intended — as harm reduction.”

The study abstract contains the information Cherkis noted. But let’s take a closer look at the further results reported in the full article. First recognize the sample size was small: 51 injection opioid drug users (IDUs) and 49 noninjection opioid dug users (non-IDUs). It was also drawn from a limited area, opioid users in Providence, RI. Only 7% reported current employment and 52% reported current homelessness. The 64% who were using diverted Suboxone because they couldn’t afford treatment can be partially attributed to the high unemployment and homelessness figures.

In addition to the results reported by Cherkis was the following data. Among those who had used diverted buprenorphine, 60% reported using it for less than 1 week; 13% for 1 week; and 28% for more than 1 week. Of those using diverted buprenorphine less than 1 week, 32% said they only used it for one day. Fifty-seven percent said they used diverted buprenorphine because they couldn’t obtain heroin; a greater percentage (68%) of IDUs than non-IDUs (41%). Forty-seven percent said they used diverted buprenorphine to ‘get high’; a greater percentage of non-IDUs (69%) than IDUs (32%). Seventy-six percent said it was easy or very easy to obtain Suboxone on the street.

The following quote by Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appeared after the selective reporting on the above study, arguing for the need of more MAT programs: “If buprenorphine is being used and being bought on the street to self-treat addiction, that’s a reflection of a need to have better medically assisted treatment programs out there.”

I don’t really think these patterns of and reasons for diverted buprenorphine use are best described as harm reduction, as Cherkis said. Technically, there are high percentages of individuals saying they used it to reduce withdrawal, and/or self-treat opioid addiction, as well to stay “clean” for some time. But most also said they used buprenorphine because they couldn’t obtain heroin. The reported time of buprenorphine use for the majority of individuals was less than a week; 32% said it was for only one day! In addition, 32% of IDUs and 69% of non-IDUs said they used it to “get high.” It seems it would be more accurate to describe this behavior as attempting a time period of controlled opioid use, rather than a method of harm reduction aimed at curtailing opioid abuse or dependence.

About fourteen months before “Dying To Be Free” was published, “Addiction Treatment With A Dark Side” appeared in The New York Times. It too looked at Suboxone treatment, but presented a different, more nuanced side to Suboxone treatment. Cherkis selected out one aspect of the article, that it “linked hundreds of deaths in the U.S. to buprenorphine and Suboxone.” He focused in on the phrase used to say buprenorphine was a “primary suspect” as a cause of death in CDC data analyzed by the NYT. He then noted caution should be used before attributing a “primary suspect” drug as a cause of death, but neglected to show that is exactly what the NYT article did do.

The NYT article said the 420 deaths with buprenorphine as a “primary suspect” paled in comparison to those reported to the FDA from methadone for the same time period. It also said “The F.D.A. information, which is spare, does show that more than half of the American buprenorphine deaths involved other substances and that only two of 224 cases specifying ‘route of administration’ indicated injection — the primary concern of regulators.” Fifty deaths were noted as suicides, 69 as unintentional overdoses from drug abuse, and 30 were fetal or infant deaths after exposure in the womb.

The NYT claimed some experts believe buprenorphine is not being monitored systematically enough to gauge the full scope of its misuse. The CDC does not track buprenorphine deaths. Most medical examiners, emergency rooms, prisons, jail and drug courts don’t routinely test for it. The director of the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland said: “I’ve been studying the emergence of potential drug problems in this country for over 30 years. . . . This is the first drug that nobody seems to want to know about as a potential problem.”

Then “Addiction Treatment With A Dark Side” had a section noting some of the aggressive actions taken by Reckitt Benckiser, the company that brought Suboxone to market, “to protect its lucrative franchise.” I’ve noted these and similar actions by Reckitt Benckiser in previous articles: “A Double-Edged Drug,” “The Seduction of Opioid Substitution” and “The Opioid Buzzard.” The Times article documented the association between Reckitt Benckiser and the federal government in bringing Suboxone to market, and in providing a place for lucrative employment when government officials left public service for employment in the private sector.

At one point in “Dying To Be Free,” Cherkis said the “squeeze of regulation” was responsible for opportunistic forces, such as “cash only Suboxone clinics and shady doctors,” as well as the “vibrant black market for illicit buprenorphine. Read the section, “Troubled Histories” in the NYT article and the follow up NYT article, “At Clinics, Tumultuous Lives and Turbulent Care” to get a clearer, more accurate picture of the problems with some of the existing Suboxone treatment centers and providers.

You also find a lengthy section describing the benefits of Suboxone treatment. Cherkis did say in “Dying to Be Free” that the NYT article did not question the efficacy of Suboxone when it was used properly. But why didn’t he discuss or cite some of the concerns? I think it was because “Dying To Be Free” was intended to be a persuasive piece of rhetoric to promote the widespread use of buprenorphine in MAT.

Undoubtedly, “Dying To Be Free” has had a significant influence on opioid treatment. But it seems that it did not present a well-rounded picture of both the problems and the benefits with MAT, specifically Suboxone. It seems to have a biomedical bias with regard to conceiving and treating opioid addiction. In Part 1 of “Feuding Ideologies,” I indicated how its rhetoric was a straw man attack on abstinent-based treatment while it extolled MAT. In Part 2, I showed how it misrepresented the recovery philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here in Part 3, I looked at how its biomedical bias seemed to dismiss or ignore many of the problems with Suboxone as a MAT for opioid addiction.

10/19/18

Feuding Ideologies, Part 2

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In the first paragraph of “Dying To Be Free,” you are introduced to Patrick, a smiling 25 year-old who had just completed a 30-day drug treatment center. Among his possessions was “a talisman he’d been given by the treatment facility: a hardcover fourth edition of the Alcoholics Anonymous bible known as ‘The Big Book.” It pages were full of highlights and Post-It notes. He was said to be a “natural” 12-step convert. Four days later, his father found him dead of an overdose.

As you read about Patrick’s struggles with addiction, you get a picture of how he and his parents tried to help him establish sobriety. There is a reference to his residential treatment stay as a “30-day wonder,” where he received a crash course on the tenets of the 12-steps. “Staff at the center expected addicts to reach a sort of divine moment but gave them few days and few tools to get there.” In Part 1 of this article, I addressed concerns that an underlying ideology of addiction as a strictly biomedical disease contributed to a biased, distorted picture of addiction treatment in the U.S. by the author of “Dying To Be Free.” Here we will look at how he also misrepresents the recovery philosophy and history of A.A.

There is a preponderance of religious or magical rhetoric when describing 12 Step, abstinent-based change in “Dying To Be Free.” Already we’ve noted the main text of Alcoholics Anonymous, also called Alcoholics Anonymous, was referred to as a talisman and a “bible.” Patrick was a “natural 12-step convert.” Another reference described the A.A. Big Book as being the size of a hymnal, with an appeal to faith made in “the rat-a-tat cadence of a door-to-door salesman.” Addicts at a certain treatment center were supposed to “reach a sort of divine moment” in treatment or recovery. Entering the drug treatment system, which is dominated by the principles of abstinence embedded in the 12-Steps, was said to require a “leap of faith.”

In a description of the Grateful Life Treatment Center in northern Kentucky, it was noted that the wall above the desk of the center’s intake supervisor had a “Jesus bumper sticker.” Why add that detail unless you are trying to capture the scene in a particularly religious way? When describing treatment facilities modeling themselves on the 12 Steps, not only were recovering addicts said to be cheap labor, they were said to provide the “evangelism” to shape the curricula of the facilities. A resident of Grateful Life was noted to be “as close to a true believer as the program produces.”

At one point, the author of “Dying To Be Free,” Jason Cherkis, said AA came out “evangelical Christian movements.” More accurately, there is a clear historical connection between a nondenominational Christian movement popular during the 1920s and 1930s called the Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous. The two cofounders of A.A., Bill W. and Dr. Bob met as a result of their personal association with the Oxford Group. A.A. approved books, such as Pass It On, Doctor Bob and the Good Oldtimers and AA Comes of Age freely acknowledge the connection and give further details about it. However, a crucial distinction made by A.A. within its 12 Steps is glossed over by Cherkis and others, namely the spiritual, not religious understanding of God and recovery embodied in the Twelve Steps.

Drawn from the thought of the American psychologist, William James, this distinction between religious and spiritual experience seems to underlie the widespread sense of generic spirituality in American culture today. The Varieties of Religious Experience  (VRE) by James had a fundamental influence on Bill W., the formulation of the Twelve Steps and the spirituality based upon them. In VRE James made a distinction between institutional and personal religion. Worship, sacrifice, ritual, theology, ceremony, and ecclesiastical organization were the essentials of what he referred to as institutional religion.

Personal religion/spirituality for his [James’] purposes was defined as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of [the] individual . . . in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” In the broadest sense possible, this spirituality consisted of the belief that there was an unseen order to existence, and supreme good lay in harmoniously adjusting to that order.

Whether their disregard of the spiritual, not religious distinction is intentional or not, Cherkis and others give an incomplete and biased picture of Twelve Step recovery when they fail to note it. The very heart of Twelve Step spirituality is the permissibility of the individual to formulate a personal understanding of their “god.” So what unites members of Twelve Step groups like A.A. is the diversity of religious and spiritual belief permitted—even to accepting a lack of belief. I’ve written several other articles on the similarities and differences between the spirituality of the Twelve Steps and religious spirituality on this website. There are three particular articles that discuss the influences on the spiritual, not religious distinction of Twelve Step recovery: “What Does Religious Mean?”, “Spiritual Not Religious Experience” and “The God of the Preachers.”

Another example of how “Dying To Be Free” misrepresents the recovery philosophy of A.A. is the following. While introducing a discussion of Charles Dederich and the origins of Synanon, Cherkis said Dederich and others took a “hard line message” from some of Bill W.’s written philosophy. Cherkis wrote: “Those who can’t stick with the program are ‘constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves,’ reads the Big Book. ‘They seem to have been born that way.’” The two selective quotes were from the first paragraph of chapter five, “How It Works,” in Alcoholics Anonymous. Notice how the context of the complete paragraph changes your understanding of what Bill W. said in his “philosophy”:

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.

As Cherkis began to discuss the history of the expansion of drug treatment facilities in the 1960s, he quoted Nancy Campbell, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as saying: “The history of 12-step came out of white, middle-class, Protestant people who want to be respectable.” She added that it offered community and belonging that was predicated on being normal, respectable and having a stake in mainstream society.  Campbell may be a historian, but she seems to have a distorted view of the early history of 12 Step recovery in A.A.

From the sociological perspective of labeling theory A.A. and other organizations based on their 12 Steps, like N.A. (Narcotics Anonymous), can at least be partially seen as social movements that seek to combat negative images associated with socially deviant drinking or drugging behavior, “in effect denying that their actions make them deviants.” This applies the idea of tertiary deviance, first described by John Kituse in: “Coming Out All Over: Deviants and the Politics of Social Problems.” Kituse noted that some people stigmatized as deviant (here as alcoholics) “rebel against their labels and attempt to reaffirm their self-worth and lost social status.” The above quote and reference to Kituse is found in a standard social science textbook by Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior.  So part of Campbell’s assessment of 12 Step groups as social movements seeking to offer community and belonging, with a “stake in mainstream society” is accurate. However, the quote attributed to her glosses over the early history of A.A., which was the beginning of the 12 Step movement.

A.A. celebrates the anniversary of its founding on June 10, 1935. That was in the midst of the Depression. Bill W. and his wife Lois were living then in a house owned by her father on Clinton Street in New York City. In September of 1936, Lois’s father died and the house was taken over by the mortgage company, which allowed them to stay on for a small rental. In the midst of the Depression, they didn’t want the house to be empty. While struggling with “their acute poverty,” Bill was almost persuaded to accept a position as a paid alcoholism therapist at Towns Hospital, where he himself had been treated several times. He eventually declined the offer.

Almost two and a half years after the founding of A.A., Bill W. was jobless and Dr. Bob was in danger of losing his house. In 1938, through the charity of John D. Rockefeller Jr., $5,000 was approved for a fund that would pay off Dr. Bob’s mortgage and allow a weekly draw of $30 for each of them. Rockefeller told one of his associates afterwards: “But please don’t ever ask me for any more.” In 1939, as the Depression eased, the mortgage company was able to sell the Clinton Street house and Bill and Lois became homeless. They lived “as vagabonds,” as various places for two years. Bill W. and Lois eventually led a respectable, middle class lifestyle, but that wasn’t what it was like for them in the beginning of A.A.

This history is found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. In the early days of A.A., Bill W. repeatedly turned down offers to professionalize his work with A.A. This doesn’t entirely sound like a movement trying to gain white, middle class respectability. The Traditions of A.A., formally adopted in July of 1950, articulated this philosophy of non-professionalism and a focus on helping other alcoholics in the fifth, sixth and eighth Traditions.

Tradition Five Reads: “Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” Tradition Six reads: “An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.” Tradition Eight reads: “Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.”

Alternative addiction treatment ideologies regularly attack A.A. as “religious,” ignoring or rejecting the spiritual-religious distinction A.A. made within the Twelve Steps from the very beginning. The abstinent-based recovery philosophy embedded in the Twelve Steps seems to be the primary target of these critiques. I see the same tendency in “Dying To Be Free.” The first part of this article addressed the biased portrayal of abstinent-based addiction treatment by Jason Cherkis in “Dying To Be Free.” The third and final part will address how it skimmed over the problems with MAT, specifically Suboxone.

10/16/18

Feuding Ideologies, Part 1

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In August of 2017, the now former Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, said he didn’t think it was necessary to declare the opioid epidemic to be a national emergency. This was despite the president’s own opioid commission recommending it as the “first and most urgent recommendation.” Two days later, the President reversed Price’s statement, saying: “The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially right now it is an emergency.” The response was mixed. While President Trump’s announcement could be used to help free up federal resources and help to prioritize responses to the disaster, it could also permit the administration to push for new sentencing legislation in order to get “tough on crime” related to drug use.

What isn’t disputed is that the U.S. does have a serious opioid problem and something needs to be done about it. Drug overdose is the leading cause of death in Americans under the age of fifty. Forecasts by STAT News are the annual death rate will increase by at least 35 percent by 2027. The CDC reported that from 2002 to 2015 there was a 5.9-fold increase in the overdose deaths from heroin and non-methadone synthetic opioids.

The latest statistics for the U.S. opioid epidemic is now available in the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Among the myriad of statistics reported there was news that heroin users increased 230% from 2002 to 2016, while heroin deaths increased 630%. An estimated 948,000 people aged 12 or over reported they used heroin in the past year. That translates to .4% of the country’s population. There were also an estimated 11.5 million people who misused pain relievers in the past year, 4.3% of the population aged 12 or over. Combined, there are 11.8 million people who misused opioids, 4.4% of the population, in 2016.

The 2016 NSDUH Report can be accessed here. A shorter, graphic-based report of key findings, including those noted above, is here.

One of the treatment approaches often touted to address the opioid crisis is medication-assisted treatment (MAT) with Suboxone. In January of 2015, Jason Cherkis wrote “Dying To Be Free.” His subtitle asked why we weren’t using a treatment for heroin addiction—Suboxone—that actually worked. The opioid problem in Kentucky was the focus of his article, which I found to be rhetorically persuasive and well written. You are introduced to individual after individual who wouldn’t or couldn’t use Suboxone and ended up dead from an eventual overdose.

“Dying To Be Free” was a finalist for a Pulitzer in 2016 for its “deeply researched reporting on opioid addiction” that showed how many drug overdose deaths could have been prevented. The cover letter submitted for its entry for the Pulitzer by The Huffington Post said it triggered a series of state and federal policy changes that rejected abstinence for opioid misuse and embraced medication-assisted treatment. “‘Dying To Be Free’ offered readers an immersive experience that included audio and video documentaries and photo and data displays.”

This was not fake news. “Dying to Be Free” captured the agony of individuals and families who struggle with opioid misuse. But it also made abstinence-based approaches to treatment and recovery a bogeyman responsible for many of the unnecessary deaths from opioid overdoses. The rhetoric of the article was a straw man attack on abstinent-based treatment while it extolled MAT. Its biomedical treatment bias seemed to dismiss or ignore many of the problems with Suboxone as a MAT for opioid addiction. Nor did it tell the whole story behind Suboxone. It also misrepresented the recovery philosophy of self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. Here’s what I mean.

In the last paragraph of his second chapter, Cherkis said: “There’s no single explanation for why addiction treatment is mired in a kind of scientific dark age, why addicts are denied the help that modern medicine can offer.” This succinctly captures the problem as he sees it with existing treatment approaches to the opioid crisis. Heroin addiction is a medical disease and should be treated as a medical disease. Modern medicine has a scientific treatment for heroin addiction that is resisted because of stigma, a deep-rooted adherence to self-help, and the criminalization of heroin addiction. If you question or oppose MAT, you are apparently mired in a kind of scientific dark age.

To enter the drug treatment system, such as it is, requires a leap of faith. The system operates largely unmoved by the findings of medical science. Peer-reviewed data and evidence-based practices do not govern how rehabilitation facilities work. There are very few reassuring medical degrees adorning their walls.

Dr. Mary Kreeft, one of the pioneers of methadone maintenance, was liberally quoted to support the medical model of addiction. She noted how opioid addiction alters multiple regions in the brain, including those that regulate reward, memory, learning, stress, hormonal response and stress sensitivity. According to Dr. Kreeft, after a long cycle of opiate addiction, a person needs specific medical treatment. Some people may be OK in time. But “the brain changes, and it doesn’t recover when you just stop the drug because the brain has been actually changed.”

An abstinence-only treatment that may have a higher success rate for alcoholics simply fails opiate addicts. “It’s time for everyone to wake up and accept that abstinence-based treatment only works in under 10 percent of opiate addicts,” Kreeft said. “All proper prospective studies have shown that more than 90 percent of opiate addicts in abstinence-based treatment return to opiate abuse within one year.” In her ideal world, doctors would consult with patients and monitor progress to determine whether Suboxone, methadone or some other medical approach stood the best chance of success.

This is a rigid, strict medical model of opioid addiction. And it gives a mixed message regarding whether or not the individual will ever be able to stop taking Suboxone or methadone. Neither drug, said Cherkis, is a miracle cure. But they buy addicts time to fix their lives, seek counseling and allow their brains to heal. So far, so good. But here comes the caution: Doctors recommend tapering off the medication cautiously. The process could take years, as addiction is a chronic disease and effective therapy takes time. Then comes the typical analogy of the pure medical model of addiction:

Doctors and researchers often compare addiction from a medical perspective to diabetes. The medication that addicts are prescribed is comparable to the insulin a diabetic needs to live.

There is no mention of neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. “Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.”

Jeffrey Schwartz and Rebecca Gladding use an almost identical description of neurological action to that given above by Dr. Kreeft to describe how to change the brain; to modify bad habits (including addiction) and unhealthy thinking. In You Are Not Your Brain, they describe how we teach our brains to act in unhealthy ways. The brain does not distinguish between beneficial and destructive habits, “it just responds to how you behave and then generates strong impulses, thoughts, desires, cravings, and urges that compel you to perpetuate your habit, whatever it may be.”

Clearly, the brain can exert a powerful grip on one’s life—but only if you let it. The good news is that you can overcome the brain’s control and rewire your brain to work for you by learning to debunk the myths it has been so successfully selling you and by choosing to act in healthy, adaptive ways.

Neuroplasticity, as described by Schwartz and Gladding, does not reject Kreeft’s neurological description of addiction.  But it does say it isn’t the whole story. An ideology of addiction as a purely biomedical condition seems to permeate “Dying To Be Free.” Addiction, when conceived strictly as a brain disease, rejects or ignores the non-scientific construct of mind. If we are conceived as only biological beings, then addiction is explained and treated within a biomedical worldview. Any treatment approach to addiction not based on this premise is therefore faulty.

Drug treatment facilities were said in “Dying To Be Free” to “generally” fail to distinguish between addictions. They have a one-size-fits-all approach.  Addicts in residential treatment experience a “hodgepodge” of drill-instructor tough love and self-help lectures. Programs appear simultaneously excessively rigid and wildly disorganized. “And with roughly 90 percent of facilities grounded in the principle of abstinence, that means heroin addicts are systematically denied access to Suboxone and other synthetic opioids.”

After describing two older, drug treatment programs with a therapeutic community model of care that used coercive techniques—Synanon and Daytop (Drug Addicts Yield TO Persuasion)— he said:

The number of drug treatment facilities boomed with federal funding and the steady expansion of private insurance coverage for addiction, going from a mere handful in the 1950s to thousands a few decades later. The new facilities modeled themselves after the ones that had long been treating alcoholics, which were generally based on the 12-step methodology. Recovering addicts provided the cheap labor to staff them and the evangelism to shape curricula. Residential drug treatment co-opted the language of Alcoholics Anonymous, using the Big Book not as a spiritual guide but as a mandatory text — contradicting AA’s voluntary essence. AA’s meetings, with their folding chairs and donated coffee, were intended as a judgment-free space for addicts to talk about their problems. Treatment facilities were designed for discipline.

In support of this claim, Cherkis referred to a 2012 study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. It apparently was a reference to “Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap between Science and Practice.” He said the study concluded the U.S. treatment system was in need of a “significant overhaul” and questioned whether the low levels of care received by addiction patients constituted a from of medical malpractice.

While medical schools in the U.S. mostly ignore addictive diseases, the majority of front-line treatment workers, the study found, are low-skilled and poorly trained, incapable of providing the bare minimum of medical care. These same workers also tend to be opposed to overhauling the system. As the study pointed out, they remain loyal to “intervention techniques that employ confrontation and coercion — techniques that contradict evidence-based practice.” Those with “a strong 12-step orientation” tended to hold research-supported approaches in low regard.

The Columbia University study did state a significant overhaul was needed in current treatment approaches; and it raised the question if the insufficient care received by addiction patients constituted “a form of medical malpractice.” It also pointed to the need for medical schools to “educate and train physicians to address risky substance use and addiction.” Unsurprisingly, it went on to say that all aspects of stabilization and treatment with addictions should be managed by a physician “as is the case with other medical diseases.” Remember that the Columbia study and Cherkis were both advocating for a physician-centered, medical model approach to addiction treatment.

However, I couldn’t find where it was supposed to have said the majority of front-line treatment workers were low-skilled and poorly trained. There was a section stating that physicians and other health professionals should be on the front line addressing addiction. Then it said: “Paraprofessionals and non-clinically trained and credentialed counselors can provide auxiliary services as part of a comprehensive treatment and disease management plan.”

It did not say the majority of front-line treatment workers were low-skilled and poorly trained “incapable of providing the bare minimum of medical care.” Yet in the case study examples found in “Dying To Be Free,” that is what Cherkis presented. The Columbia study did cite another study, which found that recovering support staff had little enthusiasm for evidence-based practices. “They also were more likely to support intervention techniques that employ confrontation and coercion–techniques that contradict evidence-based practices.” But these paraprofessionals only made up “24 percent of the treatment provider workforce.”

Cherkis seems to have mis-remembered what the Columbia study actually claimed in this matter. I wonder if, because of his commitment to a strictly medical model ideology for opiate treatment, he was reading into the study. His quote above supported the description of the treatment facilities he highlighted in his article, but wasn’t found by me in the article he cited on the Columbia study.

Another example of how his treatment ideology distorted his portrayal of Suboxone treatment was with how he described Hazelden’s Suboxone treatment program. “Dying To Be Free” mentioned that Hazelden, now the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, developed its own Suboxone treatment program for opioid addicts. But it failed to note this wasn’t accompanied by a rejection of “Twelve Step practices.” Within “The History of Hazelden,” on the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation website, was the statement of how it “integrates the cornerstone Twelve Step practices of mutual support along with multidisciplinary clinical care, evidence-based therapies and the latest research in brain science.” Why weren’t there some case study examples from Hazelden in “Dying To Be Free”?

The facilities Cherkis highlighted in Kentucky were not representative of abstinent-based addiction treatment centers in the U.S.; ones that use the 12 Steps to structure their treatment program. In reading “Dying To Be Free” I see an underlying ideology of conceiving and treating addiction, specifically opiate addiction, through a strict biomedical lens. That is not the whole story of addiction. As a result, the rhetoric of the article constituted a straw man attack on abstinent-based treatment while it extolled MAT. This bias presents readers with an implied choice, a dichotomy, between Suboxone as an MAT for addiction and 12 Step, abstinent-based treatment. Ironically, Hazelden, an historically important treatment center that pioneered 12 Step, abstinence-based treatment, did not choose MAT over the 12 Step-based treatment, but combined the two. But you don’t get that information in “Dying To Be Free.”

Part 2 and Part 3 of this article will look at how “Dying To Be Free” misrepresented the recovery philosophy of self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous; and skimmed over the problems with MAT, specifically Suboxone.