When I worked in the addiction recovery field in the UK running Wired In, I was a strong advocate of harm reduction services, including medication-assisted treatment. However, I spoke out against a treatment system that locked people into a methadone maintenance programme that provided no other therapeutic options, and no opportunity for abstinence-based treatment if people wanted to move on from daily use of methadone. Many people on methadone maintenance programmes were not even made aware of other treatment options.
Here is an excellent recent post on Recovery Review which discusses this highly pertinent issue by one of my favourite bloggers, Dr David McCartney from Edinburgh.
‘The tragedy of Scotland’s drug-related death figures has been in my mind this last week or so. The media may have largely moved on, but those of us who work in the field of addiction, those of us who know individuals who have died and those of us with lived experience of addiction will not be able to do the same.
