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NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS: ARCHIVE
Our news & announcements offer up-to-date information important and relative for us to share with you. We update often, so check back frequently. Past news and announcements are available in this archive.
08/10/2009 - "Heroin Is Our Doctor"
Today I read an Associated Press article describing the ravages of opium and heroin in Afghanistan. According to the article there are at least 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan – 50,000 more than in the United States.
Entire families, from infants to the elderly, are choosing opium over basic necessities to treat pain and hunger. Loss of human values, pawning of all belongings, selling of female children (opium brides), and placing young sons in servitude to drug dealers are not uncommon in entire villages.
There are very few treatment centers and most of them are far from the villages with a waiting list that numbers in the thousands. As I read the article, I thought of the use of Subutex and Suboxone (sublingual buprenorphine) in this and many other countries to treat opioid dependence. What a difference this medication has made in reducing relapse, significantly lessening acute withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings. The vast majority of patients are detoxed as outpatients and continue to work, stay at home and avoid the cost and disruption of inpatient treatment.
Buprenorphine was initially used as an intramuscular injection for pain, prior to the sublingual formulation. It is classified as a partial opioid agonist/antagonist. It does not completely occupy the opioid receptor site, hence partial opioid. A partial agonist is an opioid that produces less effect than a full agonist when it binds to the opioid receptors in the brain. The feeling of euphoria is significantly reduced and at appropriate doses, blocks other opioids from their effects. With the addition of naloxone (the other active ingredient in Suboxone), blockade made be complete at appropriate doses.
As a part of our foreign policy, wouldn’t it be interesting to have teams of trained medical personnel treating and distributing Suboxone in the cities and villages, thereby reducing the devastating effects of opium/heroin on the Afghani population?