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What's with junkies drinking Yops all the time?

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  • #152
    corner of hells
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,437 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    corner of hells wrote: »
    I work with addicts, for me to get a heroin into and through treatment starts like this.
    Get from heroin onto methadone, stabilise, get down to 50mls or less .
    If you're abusing or prescribed tablets address that too.Thats a hell of a process.
    Now give your four clean urines .
    All the while engaging with your doctor , support workers ,taking part in stabilisation and making sure you are medically capable of a detox.You may have to attend up to ten counselling sessions too.
    That is a long process.

    You're admission to residential, depending on where you will be up to 6 or 8 weeks detox and 14 to 16 rehab.
    I happen to know that through someone who, if you also work there, must be a colleague of yours

    That's not best practice. Best practice is that once a patient wants rehab, he or she goes in and detoxes over a week or so, then rehabilitates. Coolmine is famous for its long rehabilitation process over months if not years.

    But let's not kid ourselves. Coolmine isn't limiting its own numbers on rehab beds. That's limited by a woefully under-funded investment.

    I don't know anyone who's been to Coolmine but I do have an acquaintance there, and my understanding is that they're great once you're in, but the struggle is to stabilise in a community in which drug activity is taking place, and where housing is seriously problematic. It's not a fair playing pitch.

    I have people in my life whom, if they didn't have private insurance, would absolutely be dead today. A logical extension of that is that there are families who have lost loved ones in this country for no good reason, except that they couldn't afford healthcare.

    Most entry requirements for residential detox off methadone are between 40 to 50mls , I cant see how you'd detox off that in a week.


  • #153
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    corner of hells wrote: »
    Most entry requirements for residential detox off methadone are between 40 to 50mls , I cant see how you'd detox off that in a week.

    Then, you detox in two weeks. The point is that you don't detox in the community. That's an accident, or another addiction, waiting to happen.

    Like seriously, no private rehab facility does this. No scientific study recommends it.

    I'm not blaming the public facilities, I'm just saying it goes against all known best practices. And the costs aren't even that great. Its far cheaper than hospital accommodation.


  • #154
    corner of hells
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,437 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    corner of hells wrote: »
    Most entry requirements for residential detox off methadone are between 40 to 50mls , I cant see how you'd detox off that in a week.

    The you detox in two weeks. The point is that you don't detox in the community. That's an accident, or another addiction, waiting to happen.

    Like seriously, no private rehab facility does this. No scientific study recommends it.

    I'm not blaming the public facilities, I'm just saying it goes against all known best practices. And the costs aren't even that great. Its far cheaper than hospital accommodation.

    Two weeks? Not a chance for an admission 40 to 50mls of methadone.


  • #155
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    corner of hells wrote: »
    Two weeks? Not a chance for an admission 40 to 50mls of methadone.
    Can you clarify what you mean, are you saying people don't detox over multiple weeks in rehab centres? (before rehab proper commences)

    They do.


  • #156
    corner of hells
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,437 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    corner of hells wrote: »
    Two weeks? Not a chance for an admission 40 to 50mls of methadone.
    Can you clarify what you mean, are you saying people don't detox over multiple weeks in rehab centres? (before rehab proper commences)

    They do.

    You're methadone detox is done over 5 to 6 weeks , that's you're end where you taper down from what you're prescription dosage is.
    After that you start therapeutic rehabilitation over 14 to 16 weeks.


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  • #157
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    corner of hells wrote: »
    You're methadone detox is done over 5 to 6 weeks , that's you're end where you taper down from what you're prescription dosage is.
    After that you start therapeutic rehabilitation over 14 to 16 weeks.
    Im a bit confused here
    Nobody is questioning the idea of tapering off any drug. The whole point is that experts in this field have long been saying that this should happen outside of the community, in a secure setting where one doesn't constantly need to waste one's energy on exerting willpower, a finite resource for all human beings.

    Asking people to detox over that kind of period, in the community, is a recipe for disaster. That's why private facilities don't ask it.


  • #158
    Autecher
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,960 ✭✭✭Autecher


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    Most neuroscientists see addiction as a brain disease -- I have only heard of one who doesn't, and he could be fairly called a renegade in that field of study.

    I am not an expert on this by any means, but like yourself I have a passing interest in it because of a personal relationship, in fact a few personal relationships with addicted people.

    If addiction were solely a question of willpower, giving up would be a fairly straightforward thing. Any addicts I know are incredibly strong-willed people, I would say stronger-willed than the average person. This is seems, is substantiated by research.

    The brain-disease model of addiction is quite a strong argument in favour of the belief that addiction is not a moral failure, no more than depression, anorexia or OCD (which were, like many illnesses, once thought to result from moral weakness). Scientists now know that addiction alters the brain's plasticity and changes neural networks which would cause any rational-thinking person to cease consuming the substance. Academic studies like those cited below, which are almost universally accepted by neurobiologists, demonstrate in various different ways that diminished self-control is a result of changes in the brain that are biochemical and biological in nature.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17070107
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15808502

    Every human being only has a limited capacity for willpower. The best way of getting an addicted person to stop drinking, gambling, or taking drugs, is to initially remove the need for willpower to be exerted (surround them with a secure environment away from such activities), to allow the brain to recover (i.e. a stint in rehab, ideally), and thereafter to engage them in whatever form of therapy is best suited to that person.

    The idea that a 'junkie', so-called, can just wake up in a cardboard box and get himself sober by dint of will and common sense is pure fantasy.
    I'm not going to read those links Tyrant. Partly because I have done all the research I ever intend to do on this subject and partly because it's midnight on a Friday night and I don't want to bring myself down with that stuff. I go by anecdotal evidence with this because of the large number of junkies I have been around in my life. I know many who have done as you say, rehab and therapy. Some kicked the habit but most didn't. I have not had 1 positive experience with a junkie in my 36 years alive. All addictions are beatable and even preventable in most cases (I mean beyond just not taking or doing whatever the addiction is).
    I am going to unfollow this thread because it just makes me angry to think about my brother, you will think this is cold but I hate him and don't want to talk about him, it just makes me think of all the shítty things he has done and still does and makes me angry.

    You will not change my mind about my brother or about junkies and I will not change yours though I was never trying to. You don't like the way I talk about junkies but there is nothing I can do about that, maybe if you had the life I had you would be the same as me or you might have the same level of empathy you do for them now or maybe even more empathy than you do now, who knows?


    I'm sure there is a lot of bad grammar in that rambly post but I am tired and don't care about that now.


  • #159
    corner of hells
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,437 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »
    corner of hells wrote: »
    You're methadone detox is done over 5 to 6 weeks , that's you're end where you taper down from what you're prescription dosage is.
    After that you start therapeutic rehabilitation over 14 to 16 weeks.
    Im a bit confused here
    Nobody is questioning the idea of tapering off any drug. The whole point is that experts in this field have long been saying that this should happen outside of the community, in a secure setting where one doesn't constantly need to waste one's energy on exerting willpower, a finite resource for all human beings.

    Asking people to detox over that kind of period, in the community, is a recipe for disaster. That's why private facilities don't ask it.

    Ok , maybe I didn't explain it to good , I've had a long week.
    That five to six weeks is residential, then the 14 to 16 weeks rehab starts in the same unit.
    You enter residential on 40 to 50mls and detox of in a secure setting and then start therapeutic rehabilitation.


  • #160
    skooterblue2
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,816 ✭✭✭skooterblue2


    corner of hells wrote: »
    Ok , maybe I didn't explain it to good , I've had a long week.
    That five to six weeks is residential, then the 14 to 16 weeks rehab starts in the same unit.
    You enter residential on 40 to 50mls and detox of in a secure setting and then start therapeutic rehabilitation.

    Would have been so much easier to go to homework club/football training/theatre school on day one than to do all that withdrawal/detox.....


  • #161
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 13,712 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    corner of hells wrote: »
    Ok , maybe I didn't explain it to good , I've had a long week.
    That five to six weeks is residential, then the 14 to 16 weeks rehab starts in the same unit.
    You enter residential on 40 to 50mls and detox of in a secure setting and then start therapeutic rehabilitation.
    Really? That's great.

    It's still confusing, because I was told to my face by a medical professional who works with Coolmine that people are turned away every day due to lack of beds. How many detox beds are in Coolmine, do you know?

    Maybe she's referring to an addict who comes forward and says "I need to go into treatment", but they have to say 'go home (or back to the hostel) and do this and that and this and we'll review you then', is that possibly it?


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  • #162
    Mad_maxx
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,503 ✭✭✭✭Mad_maxx


    corner of hells wrote: »
    You would be amazed at the humanity of people when it comes to homeless people. It never comes up in the media what some individuals do.

    It's an awful thing to be homeless, had a very funny conversation with a British homeless guy opposite UHG last September, day my daughter was born, I actually had no money on me at the time, he wasn't begging, just sitting down, I know it sounds patronising but it's good to chat to someone in that situation if they start talking to you

    Same experience with an Angolan guy in Lisbon about five years ago, Lisbon has a huge number of homeless African people, they come up to your table at outside restaurants, no aggression from what I could see, this guy spoke of being a soldier in Angola, I've no reason to believe he made it up, gave him a few euro, he walked into the restaurant and left with bottles of water and some food, didn't come across as a junkie.

    People can be homeless for all sorts of reasons


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