Opioid withdrawal symptoms can be so unpleasant that people will continue using the drugs, despite the many dangers, rather than suffer through withdrawal. If you decide to stop taking opioid painkillers, you should taper off of them slowly, with the help of a doctor who can teach you how to manage your symptoms and find another way to deal with your pain. Unfortunately, many people either choose not to or don’t have the resources to get help, and they end up in emergency rooms suffering from severe side effects like increased pain, nausea and vomiting, tremors, and hallucinations. Most times, when these people arrive at emergency departments they’re simply given medication for nausea and sent on their way, with a few numbers to call about treatment if they’re lucky.
It’s a huge gap in our healthcare system, that people might wait months to get into an addiction treatment program or schedule an appointment with a specialist doctor and are left to deal with their symptoms alone in the meantime. It’s logical to think that if you feel so terrible you can’t function, you’d go to the emergency room, but unfortunately many hospitals simply aren’t equipped to deal with it. Many people with opioid addictions, especially if they’ve already tried the emergency room route once, don’t even bother seeking medical help.
One hospital in California is trying to change this. Highland Hospital in Oakland is giving people a medication specifically meant for treating withdrawal. Buprenorphine is an opioid painkiller itself, although a relatively weak one, but it is also one of the three medications approved in the United States to treat opioid addiction. It comes as a sublingual tablet, meaning you place it under your tongue and it dissolves.
A 2015 study by Yale-New Haven Hospital found that opioid addicted patients who were given buprenorphine in the emergency room were twice as likely to be in treatment a month later, compared to those who were simply provided with a pamphlet or list of phone numbers. When the head of the program at Highland read the study, he convinced the California Health Care Foundation to give a small grant to Highland and seven other hospitals in California last year.
Currently, only about five percent of the nation’s doctors — just over 43,000 – are licensed to prescribe buprenorphine. In order to prescribe buprenorphine, physicians must complete eight hours of training and apply for a waiver from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Many don’t bother, either because they don’t want people with addiction disorders regularly flocking to their practices, or because they’re afraid of being audited by the DEA. For those who are able to prescribe it, SAMHSA allows doctors to prescribe buprenorphine to no more than 275 patients.
If you or a loved one need help with quitting drugs or alcohol, consider Asana Recovery. We offer medical detox, along with both residential and outpatient programs, and you’ll be supervised by a highly trained staff of medical professionals, counselors, and therapists. Call us any time at (949) 438-4504 to get started.
