Opiate Addiction
Opiate addiction affects people across every walk of life. At Bel Air Center, we offer medically-proven treatments — including buprenorphine-based therapy — in a private, respectful setting to help break the cycle of dependency and support lasting recovery.
Opiate Addiction
Opiate addiction affects people across every walk of life. At Bel Air Center, we offer medically-proven treatments — including buprenorphine-based therapy — in a private, respectful setting to help break the cycle of dependency and support lasting recovery.
A Private, Effective Path to Opioid Addiction Recovery
Buprenorphine (pronounced byoo-pren-OR-feen) moved addiction treatment from the public clinic to the private doctor’s office. Prescribed confidentially by a physician, buprenorphine can eventually be taken at home, through 30-day prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy like any other medication.
Buprenorphine, like methadone, can eliminate physical craving for opiate drugs and withdrawal sickness. It has fewer side effects than methadone and even prevents heroin and other narcotic drugs from creating a “high”. The correct dose of buprenorphine quickly relieves the chills and nausea of withdrawal without clouding the mind. With a clear head and restored dignity, patients can work to reclaim their lives.
The Epidemic and the Treatment
Heroin and prescription painkillers control the lives of millions of Americans from every profession, age group and zip code. People who never imagined themselves as “junkies” wake up every morning with an all-consuming need to use opioid drugs. While their paths to addiction differ, their uncontrollable dependence on their drug does not. Without help, these otherwise ordinary people risk the loss of their jobs, their families, and their futures. Until recently, the most successful treatment has come at a humiliating price. Addicted individuals seeking relief from painful withdrawal symptoms commuted to government-licensed methadone clinics. There they waited in line for their daily dose of methadone, bathed in the clinic’s stigma of misery and personal failure.
Buprenorphine was approved by the FDA for use to treat opioid dependence in 2002, but it has taken the last 20+ years for it to become well-known enough to truly cause widespread changes in the foundations of addiction treatment. We are dedicated to bringing this proven and safe medication to those who can benefit the most from it.
Unfortunately, many people still believe that drug dependency signifies personal weakness. But recent neurobiological research reveals a very different picture. Addiction specialists now view addiction as a disease of the brain’s reward system. Like hypertension or depression, addiction is influenced by both genetics and lifestyle. It is complex, chronic, and remarkably stubborn. Nonetheless, addiction is a legitimate disease that can and should be treated like any other mainstream illness. A new generation of drugs led by buprenorphine begins to do just that.
How It Works
Patients take buprenorphine every day in the form of a small orange tablet or film that dissolves under the tongue. Once in the body, buprenorphine pries heroin and other narcotic painkillers away from receptor sites in the brain. It then occupies those sites very tightly, but activates the receptors only partway. This connection to the receptor is strong enough to keep other opiates away and relieve withdrawal symptoms, but weak enough to prevent its own abuse.
Administering buprenorphine is simple, but an effective buprenorphine treatment plan includes more. Patients do best when they commit to long-term, close supervision involving regular doctor visits, urine screens, and potentially counseling. Many physicians can prescribe this medication, but physicians who do not specialize in addiction often misunderstand the details of how it works. For this reason, it is recommended to follow with a specialist in addiction medicine, just as patients would follow up with a cardiologist for heart failure, or an endocrinologist for the management of diabetes.
Like every other medication, buprenorphine has risks, costs, and complications, and it can’t help everyone. It does not cure addiction. Buprenorphine temporarily removes the physical attraction of other opiate drugs by replacing them in the brain with a far less dangerous substitute. While receiving treatment, patients can live and work normally without withdrawal symptoms and without worry over how they will get their next dose of drugs. Buprenorphine offers a very good treatment option for a severe chronic medical problem.
Scientists hope their growing knowledge of the brain will someday produce a permanent cure for this all too common but often misunderstood disease. For right now, medicine does not have a cure — but it does have a safe and effective treatment to give patients back their long and healthy lives.
