Starting Suboxone: What the First Two Weeks Look Like
Short answer: the first two weeks on Suboxone are about getting the timing of the first dose right, then adjusting upward until cravings and withdrawal stop. The single thing that determines whether week one goes well is how long you wait before that first dose. Take it too early and you will feel dramatically worse, […]
Take-Home Methadone Doses: How Eligibility Actually Works
Short answer: take-home methadone is decided by your treating clinician, not by a fixed points system. Federal rules set a ceiling on how much you can be given based on how long you have been in treatment, and your program decides where you sit under that ceiling. Most articles on this subject are describing rules […]
Methadone Treatment in the Northwest Suburbs: What to Expect Locally
Short answer: if you are looking for methadone treatment in the northwest suburbs, distance matters more than it does for almost any other kind of healthcare, because you will be attending daily at the start. The two questions worth answering before anything else are how far the clinic is from where you actually are each […]
How to Help Someone You Love Start Treatment
Short answer: the approaches that actually get people into treatment are unglamorous. Stay in contact, make the practical step small, reward any movement toward help, and stop protecting them from the consequences of using. Confrontation and ultimatums, the version everyone has seen on television, perform worse than almost any alternative. What the evidence says, since […]