Why So Few Opioid Addicts Don’t Get the Treatment that Could Save Them?

UNFAIR AND UNBALANCED –

Aug. 12, 2022 – After about six years, when she could no longer endure the misery, LeBlanc sought out treatment. She had heard that Suboxone, the brand name for a medication that combines buprenorphine and naloxone, was a miracle drug that helps addicts get clean. So she asked a doctor at a treatment center in Alamance County, North Carolina, to prescribe it.

“The doctor said she felt I was there to get Suboxone because it was a legal way to get high,” LeBlanc says. “And I was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’ I was in tears when I left. She made me feel like there was no help for me. So I went back on the streets for the next three years.”

LeBlanc’s road to recovery was unusual – she got clean while in prison for car theft and stayed clean for several years until she started using prescription pain medications after suffering spinal complications from childbirth. Once again, she sought out Suboxone, and this time, a doctor at Freedom House Recovery Center in Chapel Hill wrote a script for her in 2019.

Since then, LeBlanc has taken 24mg of Suboxone daily, and except for a brief relapse with cocaine, it has helped turn her life around. She works full time at a meat smokehouse, regained custody of her three older children and feels safe from the temptations of illegal drug use. “It doesn’t make me high or sleepy or affect how I feel,” she says. “But if anything comes my way during the day, I know that I’m safe. Suboxone has been everything to me.”