The Coronavirus Is Blowing Up Our Best Response to the Opioid Crisis

Opioid addiction has increased throughout the United States. A clinic in San Francisco has been offering an opioid replacement drug called buphrenorphine to help wean addicts away from opioids. The clinic’s success at healing addicts has served as a model for clinics in other cities around the country.

As the US attempts to recover and learn from an opioid epidemic, often rehab or detox are the only solutions discussed when research says medication-assisted treatment is by far the most effective. Henry J. Austin Health Center in Trenton is the only facility in the county that provides medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction in a primary care setting.

The heroin and opioid epidemic in America has raised questions about how to effectively treat addiction. Many now say medication should be offered alongside counseling.

An epidemic of opioid use in Massachusetts resulted in more than 1,200 fatal overdoses last year. Authorities turned to Vivitrol injections, which make a drug-induced high impossible, to cut rates of both addiction and incarceration.

For those addicted to opioids, getting treatment can take a long time because not all emergency rooms offer buprenorphine and counseling interventions. Yale-New Haven Hospital has shown that if patients receive buprenorphine at their initial emergency room evaluation, then the immediate action improves the person’s chances in receiving addiction treatment.

The over-prescription of pain medicine has been a problem in southwest Colorado. Collective efforts of health care providers to standardize opioid prescriptions, clinics to expand recovery programs, and law enforcement to encourage addicts to enter rehab rather than prison, have reduced over-prescriptions of pain medications. However, they also could be unintentionally causing a rise in heroin use.

For decades, the only good option for alcoholics seeking recovery was an abstinence-based 12-step program called Alcoholics Anonymous. John David Sinclair, an American neuroscientist, has developed a new method, where an alcoholic takes naltrexone one hour before drinking. The naltrexone blocks the brain's opioid receptors and prevents an alcoholics strong synaptic reward response from occurring, which allows their craving for alcohol to eventually subside.

America is facing an epidemic of overdose deaths from opioids. Giving users a supervised place and clean needles increases use of treatment and saves lives, though it is a controversial response.

With rising opioid overdose deaths nationwide, antiquated treatment methods like abstinence-based and 12-step programs are not working. A solution can be found in medication-assisted treatment, from methadone to buprenorphine-naloxone, but there are still many barriers to access.

In Vermont, a judge and a family services organization created RapidReferal – a process which offers addicts treatment immediately and has lowered recidivism. Funded by Medicaid, the program has had demonstrable impact, namely, a decrease in recidivism.