The stigma of addiction is so bad that people who are struggling with it choose to hide it. However, addiction is not the real problem, but rather the symptom of all these underlying hurts, pains, and suffering.
Writer, speaker, and activist, David Poses was a tireless advocate for all who struggled with mental health or addiction issues. David is the author of The Weight of Air: A Story About the Lies of Addiction and the Truth of Recovery.
David emphasized that while sobriety means abstaining from drugs, alcohol, or whatever it is you’re addicted to, true recovery lies in healing the wounds that led you to addiction in the first place.
Finding the Treatment that Works for You
AA, for instance, is not an evidence-based treatment, but a support group. If that works for you, then fine. Having a support community is healing for many people.
But there is no “one” right way to treat addiction because there are different ways to approach it and so you have to find the one that works best for you
Moreover, there are two medications that are proven to dramatically reduce your risk of death, relapse, and overdose: methadone and buprenorphine. All other forms of treatment or medications do not, and many others actually do the exact opposite.
Research shows that any kind of abstinence-based treatment, whether it’s forced or voluntary, increases your risk of overdose because you come out of it, you have no tolerance, and that’s when people die.
When David struggled with addiction, he chose to hide for a long time. After trying to find a treatment that worked for him, he soon discovered buprenorphine, an opioid used to treat opioid-use disorders, which also saved his life from heroin.
Buprenorphine is a partial agonist, which has a self-defeating element to it. It works like a warm blanket on your opiate receptors that tricks them into thinking they are opioids.If you want to learn more about finding the treatment that works for you, check out Bonus: Finding the Treatment That Works for You with David Poses.