Opinion: To overcome the overdose crisis, addiction treatment must be integrated into the health care system
The first time I saw Maya (not her real name) huddled under blankets in a hospital bed in 2013, she had been to dozens of inpatient detox programs and residential treatment centers since she had begun using heroin two decades earlier. After every release, she returned to heroin use, usually within days.
Why didn’t treatment “stick”? Like many people with substance use disorders, Maya had absorbed the nihilism transmitted to her by health care providers and the programs that had failed her. Models of treatment had historically been infused with outdated and punitive notions of addiction as an issue of bad behavior and, too often, if a person wasn’t improving, it was deemed to be their fault. They’d be written off as in denial or worse — they had to “hit bottom” first.
