Addiction Education

Meet Mike. An average middle-class American, raised and living in the heartland. Married, 3 children, 2 grandchildren. A loving husband and father, Mike was very active and present in his family's lives until he hurt himself at work in 1999. At that point, he was prescribed opioid painkillers. He took them as prescribed and as his tolerance grew, his prescription was increased as he needed more and more to control the pain. But with this increased dose, "my life started to change" said Mike. He became disinterested in the things he once cherished. By 2004, he felt as though he let his family down and his wife did not have a husband and his children did not have a father. He knew he had to find a solution.

Prior to this point in his life, Mike had thought people who became addicted were making a choice to take drugs. He never thought it could happen to him. He decided he had to stop. Each time he tried, he got violently ill withdrawals and his dosage increased to 70, 80, 100 pills a day. "The one thing that I absolutely couldn't live with was the fact that I was lying to her." He told his wife about his addiction, she gave him her unconditional love and support and they started the journey together to get Mike's life and health back. It was through his research that he came upon a tool, a medication called buprenorphine, that would allow him to get help in a doctor's office and continue his life.

Before becoming addicted himself, Mike thought that addiction was a choice. With an uncontrollable compulsion to take more and more pills, and an inability to 'just stop', he soon realized that addiction is a chronic medical condition. He had to get better. His intense research about the buprenorphine treatment option led him to naabt.org. It was there he found the educational resources to make an informed decision if the treatment was right for him. There Mike also found peer support to ask questions about treatment, and then it was through the same site that he found a certified physician. "I went from taking massive amounts of painkillers one day to putting myself in moderate to mild withdrawals and with less than 12mg of Suboxone, within two to three hours, I felt as if I had never taken a painkiller in my life." Mike did not rely on the medication alone. He found a therapist, both in-person and online peer support, and the loving support of his wife and family as the foundation for his recovery. Mike is an addiction survivor and has not misused opioid painkillers since beginning treatment in 2006.

Many people also erroneously still believe that drug addiction is simply a failure of will or of strength of character. Research contradicts that position. Dr. ALAN I. LESHNER ( Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1994-2001) Explains why addiction is a brain disorder and how that impacts treatment and society.