New Treatment for Heroin Addiction

[iloveoxys03]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGXFTeuV7GE

weirdddddddddddddddddddddd

[JonnyMohawk]

personally I think thats scary shit.

What if they started court mandating pellet insertion?

Hey sadly it could happen.

[iloveoxys03]

actualy in supreme court they are arguing whether to force it on atticks who are im prisoned

[JonnyMohawk]

actualy in supreme court they are arguing whether to force it on atticks who are im prisoned

thats very very sad they are debating to cease personal choice, I suppose if it was court mandated i would rip that motherfucker out as soon as I got home and have a nurse friend staple me back up.

[dirtdog]

wtf
owww
why??

[Indy]

I thought the days of forcing "treatment" on people a la "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (great movie btw) were over. I guess as usual it's one step forward, two steps back with BASIC FUCKING HUMAN RIGHTS.

[Synack]

wtf?

Pellet insertion device? - it's a fucking cut off rig!

[robojunkie]

Sadly America has become a nation of pussies, safety nazis, I know better for you than you's and conformist/tyranny of the majority types. This nation is no more the land of the free than countless European nations and some random others. In truth it has never been the land of the free, I mean slavery was constitutional for nearly 80 years and all the time before. But it seems looking back on history that as the sense of racial, ethnic, class/economic and gender based equality has improved significantly in direct inverse proportion to a loss in individual rights. Too many people confuse equality with freedom, fairness and rights. And all too often this country's response to any inequities has not been to return/reinstate rights deserved by given groups but to take away rights enjoyed by the "priveleged" groups. Just remember, for the most part North Korean citizens are fairly equal in their freedoms: they all have none. And the disgrace of a Supreme Court seems to support this notion that eroding the Bill of Rights is a-ok as long as its done with equality.

I firmly believe that if the founders of this country, whatever hypocrisies of the times they may have had and whatever character flaws they may have suffered, would still be shocked at the loss of rights and the power of the government to infringe on personal decisions and to imprison with impunity and barbarically long draconian sentences. Imagine Jefferson or Franklin learning that their federal government with very few powers over the day to day lives of the citizenry could imprison a person for decaded because they possessed a few ounces of a given powder that was being or was going to be sold to willing customers. This would have contradicted everything about their belief in capitalism, free enterprise and basic individual rights. To say nothing of asset forfeiture, private prisons, mandatory minimums, random drug sniffing at any traffic stop, and all the other drug war atrocities that I could go on and on about with general and specific examples.

The America most of us now live in is not the America of the founders and it is not the America I learned about and believed in as a child. It is a profound disappointment.

[Moonrock]

Fellow addcits, this procedure isnt new at all. I personally had it done 3 years ago. I had the 6 months pellet. Any opiates you consume during this period literaly have zero effect, its like injecting water into your veins.
Well what can i say, i basically had a life going, a great career, social life, money, everything a NORMAL person would ever want in life. But i was never normal and was consuming lots and lots of pure rock Herion. This was like a final resort for my family as repeated rehab didnt work and i was going from bad to worse. So they sorta forced this treatment on me so as to stay clean, and unfortunaltely it worked. I stayed clean for the whole duration, got back on track and on day 181 i was shooting up at my dealers place.

[opiobsessed]

I could only stomach watching a very short period of this horror before shutting it off. After my horror with just two days of naltrexone pills by mouth a few years ago. I would fucking kill anyone if they tried to force that pellet in me.

I'll stick to feeling well on methadone instead, I'm not buzzed but still can function most of the day, until very late afternoon when I get tired as the done wears off. I worry alot from time to time about the state of us in this nazi like country. I hope opiates are here to stay and we get more control over them, hell if I want to get heroin and try it for the first time like I never yet had the chance to do, I should be able to.

Strange, they sure have bottles of all kinds of booze to go all over the place, if someone wants to drink they can anytime, but opiates?, wonder why prohibition has not been lifted on it yet. They did it with alcohol, and more people have worse health problems who are just alcoholics, than opiophiles who only use opiates. Heck my dad died in the end from years of drinking 2 or more 5ths of rum and gin every weekend when I was little. Did it for years along with ativan, when he wasn't drinking alot.

I just woke up, jonesing like a sob for heroin to try, now sitting here waiting for my 190mg done to kick in, kill some cravings, but it just isn't enough, wish clinics had a program for people with digestive issues like me, I told them I think if I could dose the same amount twice daily instead of just once, I would be better off. But of course they can't do it that way, they tried me on a split dose, but it didn't work and I had a heck of a time trying to measure out half of a bottle of pills dissolved in a small bottle of water.

[Duckfeet]

Yep, I'm going thru similar physical--and emotional--effects from my daily 100mg of methadone. And also hear, and believe, that I should probably find a clinic that will allow double dosing: in my case that would be one in the clinic, and one take home,,,until I get regular takehomes...

There is no other clinic near you, that supports people who need dual dosing, I presume...

I'm going to reply to Robo's post, and it was excellent, and covered the political reasons we are such a bad state. I actually did try to get up to Canada, to attempt to enroll in NAOMI's clinical heroin trial, but was turned away at Vancouver Airport (sent back to U.S.) but at least I tried. I live off of a small pension, and have often been tempted to move to England, and try to get on the heroin program there, but u know, it's not a *sure* thing, best I understand, and the simple logistics, and of course, heartache, of leaving family, is a lot, maybe too much, for me old brain to compute. We'll see.

But I get furious and the constant attempt by gov't to find a treatment for heroin addiction, when heroin itself is the best treatment around, and its *only* the puritanical crap that keeps em...ah, I'm getting started on a rant, and today is the *final* day of Intl. Bodysurfing Championships in Oceanside, and friend of mine is in the finals, so I"m headed up North.....One good non-drug thing in my life.... Hey, I ain't got a job or a girlfriend...what else *is* there, other than opiates or bodysurfing?

Best wishes~

df

I could only stomach watching a very short period of this horror before shutting it off. After my horror with just two days of naltrexone pills by mouth a few years ago. I would fucking kill anyone if they tried to force that pellet in me.

I'll stick to feeling well on methadone instead, I'm not buzzed but still can function most of the day, until very late afternoon when I get tired as the done wears off. I worry alot from time to time about the state of us in this nazi like country. I hope opiates are here to stay and we get more control over them, hell if I want to get heroin and try it for the first time like I never yet had the chance to do, I should be able to.

Strange, they sure have bottles of all kinds of booze to go all over the place, if someone wants to drink they can anytime, but opiates?, wonder why prohibition has not been lifted on it yet. They did it with alcohol, and more people have worse health problems who are just alcoholics, than opiophiles who only use opiates. Heck my dad died in the end from years of drinking 2 or more 5ths of rum and gin every weekend when I was little. Did it for years along with ativan, when he wasn't drinking alot.

I just woke up, jonesing like a sob for heroin to try, now sitting here waiting for my 190mg done to kick in, kill some cravings, but it just isn't enough, wish clinics had a program for people with digestive issues like me, I told them I think if I could dose the same amount twice daily instead of just once, I would be better off. But of course they can't do it that way, they tried me on a split dose, but it didn't work and I had a heck of a time trying to measure out half of a bottle of pills dissolved in a small bottle of water.

[Hammilton]

Well, I don't know what to say about it. I couldn't get the video to work for some reason, so I'm assuming that this is a long acting naltrexone injection or pellet, correct?

I guess in the case of prisoners, then in some cases mandated medication is allowable. It is a pretty limited situation, though. That's going to change as our understanding of addiction changes from moral failing to the medical model.

I don't say I disagree with the medical model, but in a system where treatment of self-injurious, mentally ill prisoners are allowed to be force-medicated, it can' be difficult for the system to say any drug use is self-injury and addiction is an illness. Bingo.

On the plus side, it gets us better treatments on the outside. Look at suboxone. Since we're switching toward a medical model, our understanding of addiction and depression are linking and the use of light-opioids for both is going to become more common.

There's actually a study going on right now using tramadol for depression. That's a pretty forward idea. A medication with known opioid activity (even one unscheduled- though I doubt that status lasts long) being used for depression! Docs are prescribing Suboxone the off-label for the same condition, and getting away from it.

These are very good improvements.

It's easy to be pessimistic in this country. I don't think it's as bad as we paint it. I often get super depressed about how thing are going. That's what happens when I don't take the time to look at the good things.

There's also some serious back-stepping. The baby-boomers long gave up on the most meaningful social revolution our country has ever seen.

I hoped the return to consumerism of the 80s and 90s would have died with 9/11 or the previous dot-com busts, or the China-made scare. I'm losing hope though. Maybe if the Celebutantes would lose their credibility (if they've ever had, or needed any) we'd be better off. I do applaud media efforts, like the AP's hilton-blackout, but it'd take a lot more than that.

fuck now I'm just rambling.

[Z-man]

Aside from the fact that this is just plain fucked up, there are some serious issues with mandatory/forced maintenance with opiate antagonists. The problem is that these drugs will block natural endorphins as well as illegal opiates, and the end result can be a feeling of blah-ness, with nothing much resembling true enjoyment of life. I remember seeing one study that concluded that people on naltrexone have a greatly diminished capacity to enjoy music compared to people placed on a placebo. Results like this have always made me very wary of any long-term treatment with an antagonist. I suppose in some extreme cases it might be justified, provided the patient really knows what he/she's in for, but forcing it on prisoners? No, definitely not. We are coming perilously close to a "Brave New World" type scenario where everyone is forcibly drugged into being a shiny happy compliant model zombie... Er, citizen.


Disclosure Note: honesty compels me to admit that I didn't actually watch the video in the link (I have a rather slow dial-up connection), but I think I have a good idea what's on it.

[tptptp]

I don't know about the Supreme Court thing, but Gooberman (if it's the same one I'm assuming it is) is pretty much out of business. 7 people died in his rapid detox program and countless more wanted to suicicde and went through absolute hell and this and that. He got sued but only had to pay like an 11k finbe because they convinced the judge that the addicts that come to him at this point were so lowly that this was a last resort type thing and they would have likely dfied anyways! it was appealed and he ended up having to pay alot of money to the state and a little to the family, believe he got his license stripped for 2 years instead of like the original 6 months...no one will hire himand hes laying very low.

We have become such a complacent society we let this stuff happen unfortunately. Pressure does work but not enough people want to exert it anymore. Unfortunately the more violent the resistance etc. the quicker changes take place. Americans have become complacent with their alcohol and their "freedoms" and are too damn scared to take action as they slowly strip them away....they don't wanna go to jail; or have others think they are nuts for being radical or taking a stand. A real stand with real force...

If all the junkys in the US took a stand and marched on the white house caused riots and problems and this and that they would HAVE to do something. No changes have ever taken place without the pressure and FINALLY after such a long time even the anti drug nazi's are realizing its time for a change but its happening all too slowly. Thanks to people like nixon and nancy raegan for doing much much more harm then good.

Also, unfortunately I'd say the general population is of low intelligence and high ignorance (literally) we always have to have someone to look down on to make ourselves feel better.

We did the same with mentally ill patients for the longest time (and still are somewhat). Anything that people don't completely understand they are ignorant about. People love to talk about what they don't know.

[Alifaust]

I don't know about the Supreme Court thing, but Gooberman (if it's the same one I'm assuming it is) is pretty much out of business. 7 people died in his rapid detox program and countless more wanted to suicicde and went through absolute hell and this and that. He got sued but only had to pay like an 11k finbe because they convinced the judge that the addicts that come to him at this point were so lowly that this was a last resort type thing and they would have likely dfied anyways! it was appealed and he ended up having to pay alot of money to the state and a little to the family, believe he got his license stripped for 2 years instead of like the original 6 months...no one will hire himand hes laying very low.

We have become such a complacent society we let this stuff happen unfortunately. Pressure does work but not enough people want to exert it anymore. Unfortunately the more violent the resistance etc. the quicker changes take place. Americans have become complacent with their alcohol and their "freedoms" and are too damn scared to take action as they slowly strip them away....they don't wanna go to jail; or have others think they are nuts for being radical or taking a stand. A real stand with real force...

If all the junkys in the US took a stand and marched on the white house caused riots and problems and this and that they would HAVE to do something. No changes have ever taken place without the pressure and FINALLY after such a long time even the anti drug nazi's are realizing its time for a change but its happening all too slowly. Thanks to people like nixon and nancy raegan for doing much much more harm then good.

Also, unfortunately I'd say the general population is of low intelligence and high ignorance (literally) we always have to have someone to look down on to make ourselves feel better.

We did the same with mentally ill patients for the longest time (and still are somewhat). Anything that people don't completely understand they are ignorant about. People love to talk about what they don't know.


Gooberman's rapid detox and 3-6 month naltrexone pellets...that takes me back.
I never had one personally, but back in 2001-2002 I was dating someone whose parents kept making him get the stupid pellet every time they found out he was getting high. They were wealthy and supported him, so he didn't really have much of a choice as they paid for his apartment and they would've stopped paying if he didn't get it.
I drove him from where he lived in NH down to NJ once to get the pellet, and we tried to tell his parents he got it when he didn't, he was so against getting it that he was considering slicing himself open and giving himself stitches, but unfortunately they found out he didn't get it, came and took him in the middle of the night, drove him to NJ and left him in a hotel room by himself for a week to detox, since you can't use opiates within seven days of the implant.
He would come back from the surgery with this huge incision down one of his sides of his stomach with these nasty looking stitches.
He would be horribly depressed (more so than usual in my opinion) after the pellet, and about halfway through would use so much heroin that he could override it, but that is dangerous, since there is a fine line between getting through naltrexone and overdose.
The last years of his life were crap, and the naltrexone pellets didn't help. In 2000 his girlfriend before me ODed like 5 times before she finally died, he woke up in the morning to her dead body (and the story behind this is long and horrible, I'm sure I'll talk about it sometime), then he OD'ed on Christmas at his parents house in NH and was arrested for having heroin residue on a knife. His girlfriend died on 9/11/00,. so when the attacks on 9/11/01 happened they really messed with his head, since every time he turned on the TV, he'd hear 9/11, and he associated it with the death of his girlfriend, then he went on Methadone, had some problems with it, got off, went to detox and was forced on the pellet.
He found out I had cheated on him and couldn't really deal with it with all that was going on, and we broke up. One year later, a year to the day after I brought him to NJ for the pellet, he died.
I feel horrible for him, and I have asked myself before if, on top of all the other misery in his life if the pellets his parents kept forcing on him didn't have something to do with it.
Please anyone who is thinking of the pellet don't do it.
I was on Naltrexone pills and they were really bad, I wish I had been better informed at the time. When I took it I didn't realize it was the same drug they put in those pellets.
All I can say is thank god I didn't have that garbage stuck in my system for 3-6 months or I might have killed myself.
Sorry for the rant, I am just very strongly against this medication. i think doctors need to inform patients of the risks involved, but like the quoted poster said, the way they see it, it's better to be miserable than addicted. I can't believe it is being considered as a "treatment" to be forced on our prisoners.

[Opiyum]

Look into Orthomolecular treatment. It may help ease the pain of seeing something like this and show that in some places people are approaching drug addiction in a sensible reasonable way.
Just don't look at how much it costs.

By the way what's with the X-files music going on during the clip? Maybe science fiction was the inspiration behind this.

[Duckfeet]

Yep, Robo's post was perfect and should be read by everybody...but unfortunately, most of us have learned this the hard way...and like he said, as long as people's own rights are protected, they could care less. Just a hundred years ago, people would have been outraged at the kind of government intrusion that is now taken for granted, and mandatory "detox" and the sort of crap we have read about in this post are coming more and more. The outrage to me, is that they are being forced upon many of us. It's funny. I"m a libertarian, and that is kind of a fringe group, often confused with republicans, because of our dislike of taxes, and like of smaller government. But we're not...we simply believe in the same things the founders of this country believed in...and the founder's fears of government have come true. They weren't optimists, IMO...most of them weren't sure if this experiment in "self-government" would work...and since most people obviously *are* sheep, I don't see it working all that good anymore either, unless u r a zombie who toes the line.

Frightening. I mean, any of you who are pals with Flipside know the hell she has been going thru is just as a result of repressive gov't policies, and now docs are running scared. Would *you* want to perscribe opiates to one of us, when junkies *themselves* are turning around and suing docs who perscribed them opiates...they are the lowest of the low to me. Most of the friendly old docs, who had compassion for addicts, and tried to help us out, are gone or in prison themselves...well, I'm getting going on a rant again...it's a tough racket we are in, and I don't see it getting better in my lifetime....

[iloveoxys03]

i think the fact ucheated on him drove him over the edge

[robojunkie]

i think the fact ucheated on him drove him over the edge

That's ignorant and uncalled for. Why the fuck do you think that someone who has just posted a long story about how someone she love died, and for which she already feels somewhat responsible as she had said, needs to hear some mean-spirited wise-ass shit from you? Do you think that's funny? So next time you steal your best friend's oxys while he's nodding and then, cause he's unstable to begin with, and this is the straw that broke the camel's back, "losing" all 50 of his 40 mg OCs, he just gives up, shuts the garage door and turns on the car after taking 5 k-pins and half a fifth of whiskey, and when this happens you post about "fuck, I think I mighta kinda sorta caused my bro to do himself in, not sure" then I or someone else just says, yeah dude, you pushed him over the edge. Best friend for 10 years, how could you do that? You're a terrible person and you should feel awful. It's all your fault!"

I mean come on man, that's just cold.

Oh, and Alifaust, just ignore this kid. Sometimes shit happens, and often we have no way of foreseeing the future and what could happen. Obviously your intent was not to contribute to this type of thing. I mean none of us are psychic nor can we foresee every consequence of every action. Not that you even really know this was the reason or a major reason or even a small reason. No one is responsible for suicides or rapid declines that lead to death unless they molested that person/raped that person, were ss guards at a nazi death camp, or did intentionally some horribly awful crime against another that destroyed them.

[pharmboy]

Well yes ever since 911 gave THEM the pretext to turn
this country into a POLICE STATE they certainly have
been going full speed ahead and fuck anybodys rights.
My favorite forfather dude was Thomas Jefferson, its
to bad he cant be president now.
Also I had a Naltrexone implant for six months, lets
just say if THEY ever put another one in me if I couldnt
cut it out Id chew it out.

[jacky]

I was one of the first ten people in my state to try the naltrexone oral regimine....

I lost more weight on naltrexone than when I was using heroin.

it gave me horrible insomnia, and I didnt want to get on valium to counteract that.

plus, naltrexone, at least for me, doesnt block an opiate high, I just have to use twice as much when relapsing.

a freind of mine tried to do the same thing, and died in a corner of a room while his freinds did smack and ignored him.

the only use I see for naltrexone for me is using in the microgram amount to POTENTIATE STANDARD OPIATES, and that is about it.

hope it might work for some others.

the last thing I would ever put in my body is a fucking naltrexone pellet, the only drug that my freinds found out that was blocked by naltrexone is LSD

I have yet to hear from any person that naltrexone works for cravings, but then I dont go searching for naltrexone proponents do I?
ha ha.

its an interesting drug, maybe stuctural augmentation will give us a decent analog of naltrexone that has more promise.

or, maybe someone will come up with a tech to turn naltrexone into an opiate agonist.

[Dirtyrockstar]

hows it? i just skimmed thru most of the other posts but naltrexone has been authorised for use here in perth (no other city state country principality or the like) for years. its not authorised for testing on animals in other countries but certain doctors here can "prescribe" it for opium addiction and fill ppl up with it.

i have three (3) friends who have had this procedure done. it involves going into the back room of a doctors office (NOT a hospital) and with nothing but a small local anathesia having your gut sliced open and ping pong ball sized implants inserted into you, at a cost of $1000 Au per implant, these implants slow release naltrexone into your body over a course of 1yr, which as previously stated will render any opiate you ingest completely useless. i have not known anyone to have less than 3 implants done simultaneously.

HOWEVER. it has been discovered 'round here that the naltrexone implant does NOT have the ability to reverse the effects of buprenorphine, due, i assume to its extreme binding affinity to the mU opioid receptor, (any real dr's feel free to correct me). this has seen the street price of bupe reach $50 Au for one 8mg tablet. unsure of the price of temgesic injectables as they are rarely seen anymore.

the most common side effect of this procedure (despite the obvious personality changes and "im better than you" attitudes) is, as someone put it "they go off the slow and and on to the go". If your unfamiliar with aussie slang "slow, downtown, smack" is heroin "go , goey, uptown, rock (thats right, rock is now speed and not heroin, i am DISGUSTED)" ppl with needle fever simply substitute speed for heroin and become worse than ever.

one of those 3 ppl was a success story, he kicked and never looked back. despite originally being a speed user he never went on the go and is still clean.

[jacky]

shit, just realized that I double posted pretty much the same info in this post below as above.
oh well.....


in my opinion naltrexone is mostly useless....unless it helps you with cravings.

I got high on heroin, while on naltrexone....it did seem to inhibit the first few shots I took, but only a 40$ amount of good west coast tar was enough to get me very well high.

if it helps someone stay off opiates, thats a good thing, but if a person overdoses trying to get high while on naltrexone, whats the point? a freind of mine named Dan died trying just that. apparently someone told him that I got high while on naltrexone, and he tried to do the same thing.
the only difference, is that I went and hung out with freinds for 24 hours while I was using, surrounded myself with other junkies that were happy to see me back in the game.
dans freinds let him rot in a corner and die.
(one of the kids later converted to buddhism because of his guilt from letting his freind slip away, the result, a most indignant ass who felt like he repaid the world for its loss by having an opinion about religion)

the last thing I would ever do is let a doctor put a ball of naltrexone in my body. good god, that would be horrible.

[Duckfeet]

Yep: to me, it reminds me too much of other useless games I'd try: first one, of course, was to give my dope to this mamasan in my hooch, and tell her not to give it to me...and there've been many more...and none of'em worked, really. England's got the most humane policy of all: just let fucking junkies get their damned dope and leave us alone...fuck...I'm so sick: I puked up my methadone in front of clinic, like an ass....fuck....