An Associated Press (AP) news wire service story out today quotes a misinformed woman in recovery who said:
“In order for Suboxone treatments to work properly, patients should take it for no longer than two weeks, and they should be treated in a clinic.”
The information is wrong. Long term Suboxone treatment is more effective than short term Suboxone treatment.
The reporter didn’t bother to talk to a doctor or other expert. The reported didn’t take the time to do a simple Google search, and neither did the editor.
My theory is that many news articles about addiction are really intended to titillate, not inform. The “facts” that count to this reporter are that the woman in recovery is 24, beautiful, a former cheerleader who is now a wife and mother –and was addicted to OxyContin. This is what will interest the reader, the reporter thinks, not accurate information about treatment for opiate dependence.
The reporter, Tricia Neal, does not even get the most basic treatment facts right. She says, “Suboxone is designed to wean oxycodone addicts from their addiction much like methadone weans opiate addicts from their drugs.”
The reported did not realize, or care enough to find out, that oxycodone is an opiate, and Suboxone (buprenorphine) and methadone are both used to treat opiate dependence.
The article also contains this misleading quote:
“Increasingly often, young people are turning to prescription drug abuse either because the drugs are easy to obtain or because they believe that pharmaceuticals are safer to ingest than street-level drugs. In reality, however, abused prescription drugs can be as addictive as heroin, and the risks associated with their abuse can be dangerous and even deadly.”
The reported did not explain that pharmaceutical opiates are safer than heroin. This is because unlike heroin, pharmaceutical opiates like OxyContin are free of dangerous additives or “cuts” that can cause illness. And with a pharmaceutical opiate, the user knows what dose of medication they are getting. The strength of the medication is consistent and known. Heroin varies in strength from dose to dose and it is difficult to know how strong a particular dose will be, increasing overdose risk.
Of course, pharmaceutical opiates are still just as addictive, still dangerous and can still be deadly. But people who choose pharmaceutical opiates over heroin for improved safety are, in fact, reducing their level of risk.
I was also interested by the quotes from the woman in recovery, a fount of misinformation with a reporter writing down her every word unquestioned, who apparently does not realize that her own long term Suboxone treatment probably played the key role in her own recovery.
The article says she overcame her addiction through medication-assisted treatment with Suboxone and participation in a church recovery group. But she doesn’t seem to give the Suboxone treatment much credit for her recovery success, even though she had tried “hundreds of time” to quit before.
Read the full article here.
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This reporter is so irresponsible! Does she realizes that she’s minimizing a life threatening problem? If I was not correctly informed and read that article I would think “Its not that big of a deal that my kid is using oxy…they even have a “cure” for it”.
Are reporters held accountable for giving misinformation? So many people believe what they read thinking “well if its in the newspaper or on TV news, it must be true….”. I am not a cynical person by nature, but I don’t trust most media sources and will research the heck out of anything that interests me to get FACTS.