[rbobby]

> In the U.K., researchers looked at data from more than 150,000 people treated for opioid addiction from 2005 to 2009 and found that those on buprenorphine or methadone had half the death rate compared with those who engaged in any type of abstinence-oriented treatment.

That's some pretty scary data. Half the death rate... that's a very significant number.

> You're advocating to stay on a drug the rest of your life?

Why not? It saves lives (hello insulin). And here's a telling bit from the article:

> When patients take a stable, regular and appropriate dose, maintenance medications don’t cause impairment, and the patient can work, love and drive. In essence, what maintenance does is replace addiction — which, remember, is defined as compulsive use despite consequences — with physiological dependence, which, as noted above, is not harmful in and of itself.

Here's the link with much more info about buprenorphine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4293937/

Certainly it would be nice to have an effective solution that didn't require daily use... but we don't. What we have is a safe drug that cuts the death rate by half.

[taylorswift_]

If there were 0 people who recovered from opiate addiction without being hooked on a maintenance drug for the rest of their lives then it'd have more credence. If you give an alcoholic xanax for the rest of their life because it affects the same area of the brain but they aren't drunk anymore, are they recovered?

Not to mention, that seems like a pretty horrible and bleak outlook to make people believe they can't make a full recovery without being medicated for the rest of their life.

Again, I've known many people who have taken these drugs and a large number of them relapse bad. In fact, from what I hear the withdrawl from suboxone is 10x worse than from heroin.

[astura]

If someone replaces a drug that's doing them very serious harm with a drug that doesn't do them harm, I don't see the problem.[1] I take doctor prescribed medication daily that I could live without but it significantly increases my quality of life, I don't see a difference between me and a person who is on methadone but otherwise well in life - has job, money, clothes, friends, community, etc.

[1] Xanax has a lot of problems with long term use though, so Xanax, specifically, would likely not be a good candidate.

My MIL replaced alcohol and cocaine addictions with a coffee addiction. It's been over a decade and she doesn't seem to have any significant negative outcomes with the coffee and coffee is cheap and readily available almost everywhere. From what I see, I believe the coffee is more of a psychological crutch for her - but it's not harming her.

[KGIII]

It's not always about recovery, but harm reduction.

[pnutjam]

best is the enemy of better, sometimes we can only do better and best is a pipe dream. I spent most of my life so far learning this.

[KGIII]

And sometimes better is our best. I'm on Suboxone. I'm okay with that. Harm reduction is a good thing.