6 min read
If you're considering Suboxone for yourself or a loved one, you have probably already heard some version of this question. It comes from family members. It comes from coworkers. It sometimes comes from people in twelve-step rooms, and -- most painfully -- it sometimes comes from the patient's own internal voice. If I take this medication, am I really sober? Or am I just on a different drug?
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7 min read
There are three FDA-approved medications for opioid use disorder: buprenorphine, sold as Suboxone, Zubsolv, and others, and as the long-acting injection Sublocade; methadone; and naltrexone, sold as the monthly injection Vivitrol. All three work. None of them is universally the right answer. The right one for any given patient depends on their pharmacological situation, their life circumstances, and what kind of treatment structure actually fits into their week.
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8 min read
If you are reading this, you have probably already done the hardest thing, which is making the decision to seek treatment. What follows is logistics. Logistics are scary mostly because they are unfamiliar, so this article walks through exactly what the first day actually looks like -- minute by minute, more or less -- so the unfamiliarity gets used up before you arrive.
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11 min read
A consultation. The patient is a young man in his late twenties, the son of a family that has been managing his opioid use disorder, with increasing distress and increasing expense, for nearly two years. He has been through detoxification, two residential placements, and a period of intensive outpatient treatment. He is again at risk. His mother, on the introductory call, asks a question that requires the longer answer.
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