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Tag: opioid use disorder

  • Sackler Family Says Opioid Lawsuit Is "Misleading"

    Sackler Family Says Opioid Lawsuit Is "Misleading"

    The family’s lawyers have filed motions to dismiss the complaint filed against them by the Massachusetts Attorney General.

    Members of the billionaire Sackler family say that public outrage over their alleged role in the opioid epidemic—as the owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma—is all a big misunderstanding. 

    According to lawsuits filed across the country, including one in Massachusetts, members of the Sackler family played an active role in pushing opioid painkillers marketed by Purdue Pharma, despite knowing about the addiction risks.

    As the national opioid crisis worsened, the company even considered selling addiction medication to further profit off of opioid addiction, the lawsuits allege. 

    However, a statement made by the family’s attorneys this week said that prosecutors and the press are cherry-picking information to make the family look bad, according to WGBH Boston. 

    “We are confident the court will look past the inflammatory media coverage generated by the misleading complaint and apply the law fairly by dismissing all of these claims,” the statement read. 

    The Sacklers are one of the richest families in the U.S. and are major donors to museums, colleges and other institutions. However, the family has been subject to more scrutiny as the lawsuits against them pile up.

    In February, activists staged a “die-in” at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City to highlight the role of the Sacklers in promoting addictive opioids. The family had donated extensively to the museum. More recently, a donation to the UK’s National Portrait Gallery was mutually cancelled because of public outcry. 

    “It has become evident that recent reporting of allegations made against Sackler family members may cause this new donation to deflect the National Portrait Gallery from its important work,” a spokesperson for the Sackler Trust told NPR. “The allegations against family members are vigorously denied.”

    Those allegations include that family members, particularly former Purdue Pharma President and Chairman Richard Sackler, were actively involved with marketing OxyContin in misleading ways even when they knew the risk of addiction to the pills was high. The Massachusetts lawsuit alleges that Sackler even visited doctors to help push OxyContin, something that the family denies. 

    Richard Sackler also reportedly made a comment in 1996 about OxyContin’s launch being “followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition.”

    This week, attorneys for the family said that the statement was taken out of context, and that Sackler was actually referring to a snow blizzard that had made him late for the event. 

    The statement goes on to say that the lawsuit “mischaracterizes and selectively quotes from the hundreds of documents it cites to create the false impression” that the family “micromanaged every aspect of Purdue’s marketing strategy.” Rather, the family was not that closely involved with the operations of Purdue, the statement said. 

    However, the Sackler family (not just Purdue) was ordered to pay $75 million over five years as part of a settlement with the state of Oklahoma last week. After that, New York added the family to its ongoing lawsuit against Purdue. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Hope Stems" Campaign Spotlights How Opioids Affect The Brain Using Flowers

    "Hope Stems" Campaign Spotlights How Opioids Affect The Brain Using Flowers

    The floral exhibit coincided with the Macy’s Flower Show, and aimed to depict opioid addiction in a different light.

    While flowers are typically given on joyous occasions—births, graduations or anniversaries—florists around the nation have also found themselves preparing hundreds of thousands of bouquets for the funerals of people who have died from opioid addiction. 

    With that in mind, the addiction advocacy group Shatterproof has launched a new initiative, showing a brain made from more than 9,000 carnations, pockmarked by black poppies meant to represent the effects of opioids on the brain. 

    The exhibit, called “Hope Stems” was on display in Herald Square in New York City from Tuesday to Thursday (April 2-4). 

    The public was invited to remove a poppy from the bouquet, symbolizing the restoration that happens when someone gets treatment and is able to overcome their opioid addiction. 

    “As a father who lost his son to addiction, ‘Hope Stems’ gives me so much optimism,” Shatterproof Founder Gary Mendell, whose son died by suicide in 2011 after fighting opioid addiction, told Campaign Live. “This installation will impact how people view those suffering from addiction. It is my sincere wish that this campaign will help end the stigma and encourage those who are suffering to seek treatment. By changing how we think about addiction we can save lives.”

    The display is timed to coincide with the Macy’s Flower Show, which runs through Sunday, April 7. 

    June Laffey, who works as chief creative officer at McCann Health New York, said that the “Hope Stems” campaign is a powerful way to raise awareness and get attendees at the flower show to think about addiction and ways to provide treatment to people who need it. 

    “This campaign has the power to not only change the way people think about opioid addiction, but to save lives,” Laffey said. 

    By using the flowers to form a brain, the initiative focused on the fact that addiction is a brain disease, not simply a matter of willpower or choice. 

    “Opioid addiction is not a weakness,” Laffey said. “It is a disease that changes the brain. There’s science to prove it. With knowledge comes power. With knowledge comes compassion. With knowledge comes hope.”

    She continued, “Hope stems from reducing the stigma and speaking with compassion. So let’s all speak with one voice. The more we reduce stigma, the more people will seek treatment and the more lives will be saved.”

    After New York, the Hope Stems display will appear in Atlanta from April 22-25 (Monday through Thursday) during the Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Oklahoma Lawsuit Against Purdue Pharma Settles For $270 Million

    Oklahoma Lawsuit Against Purdue Pharma Settles For $270 Million

    The bulk of the settlement will go to Oklahoma State University to fund an addiction treatment center and addiction treatment medicine.

    The first lawsuit of around 2,000 filed against Purdue Pharma and other drug manufacturers/distributors has settled for $270 million, Reuters reports. The money which will go toward mitigating the opioid crisis.

    The lawsuit was filed by Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and would have gone to court in May.

    It accused pharmaceutical companies Purdue Pharma (the maker of OxyContin), Johnson & Johnson, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries of deceptive marketing that fueled the national opioid epidemic.

    The $270 million settlement is with Purdue Pharma only, so Johnson & Johnson and Teva are still expected in court on May 28 of this year.

    According to Reuters, the state of Oklahoma was seeking a total of $20 billion in damages caused by opioid addiction and overdose. The bulk of the $270 million from the settlement will be granted to Oklahoma State University to fund an addiction treatment center and addiction-fighting medications.

    $12.5 million will be given to local governments to help them recover from the opioid epidemic, and $60 million will be paid in legal fees. Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma will pay an additional $75 million to the university.

    This settlement has been encouraging news for critics of drug companies who believe this is a sign of more settlements to come. Purdue Pharma had been considering bankruptcy as a way to halt the roughly 2,000 lawsuits against it.

    However, it appears that Purdue may instead be opting for a far-reaching settlement across the many similar lawsuits. This is how the legal battles against the tobacco industry ended in 1998—with a $246 billion settlement, Reuters noted.

    University of Connecticut School of Law Professor Alexandra Lahav believes that the Purdue settlement “may be the start of the dominoes falling” for the company.

    According to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the opioid epidemic has caused over $500 billion in economic damages across the U.S. in the year 2015 alone.

    That number likely rose in 2016, when the total number of deaths from opioid-related overdoses jumped from 33,091 to over 42,000.

    Between deaths, the costs of treating overdose cases and addiction, missed work by those affected, and crime related to illicit opioids, the crisis has been economically devastating to communities across the nation.

    Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family have continued to deny its alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic, stressing that prescription opioids come with FDA warnings about addiction and overdose. This argument, however, has proved to be an ineffective deterrent. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Americans Are Unhappy And The Opioid Epidemic May Be A Factor

    Americans Are Unhappy And The Opioid Epidemic May Be A Factor

    For the third straight year, the U.S. has dropped in the rankings of the World Happiness Report.

    The United States is now the 19th happiest country on Earth, its ranking falling for the third consecutive year. 

    This is according to the most recent World Happiness Report, released on Wednesday (March 20) or the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness.

    The Washington Post reports that the seventh annual report surveyed 156 different countries and took into account six factors: GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, the freedom to make life choices, social support, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

    The top 10 countries in the report were Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and Austria.

    “We finished 19th on the list behind Belgium,” Jimmy Kimmel said on his late night show. “The people who feel the need to put mayonnaise on their french fries are happier than we are. Cheer up, everybody.”

    While the report doesn’t specify why each country ranked where it did, the authors of the report have speculated in a news release that substance use disorder and the opioid epidemic contributed to America’s ranking.

    “This year’s report provides sobering evidence of how addictions are causing considerable unhappiness and depression in the U.S.,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor and the author of the “Addiction and Unhappiness in America” section of the report. 

    “The compulsive pursuit of substance abuse and addictive behaviors is causing severe unhappiness. Government, business, and communities should use these indicators to set new policies aimed at overcoming these sources of unhappiness,” Sachs added.

    Sachs also noted that the results of the report serve as building blocks for countries moving forward. 

    “The World Happiness Report, together with the Global Happiness and Policy Report offer the world’s governments and individuals the opportunity to rethink public policies as well as individual life choices, to raise happiness and wellbeing,” Sachs said. “We are in an era of rising tensions and negative emotions (as shown in Chapter 2) and these findings point to underlying challenges that need to be addressed.”

    According to the news release, this year’s report specifically honed in on happiness and the community, taking into account how technology, social norms, conflict and government policies have played a role in shaping each country. 

    “The world is a rapidly changing place,” Professor John Helliwell, co-editor of the report, said in the news release. “How communities interact with each other whether in schools, workplaces, neighborhoods or on social media has profound effects on world happiness.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • NIDA's Nora Volkow: There's No Evidence That Cannabis Can Treat Opioid Addiction

    NIDA's Nora Volkow: There's No Evidence That Cannabis Can Treat Opioid Addiction

    Volkow says that patients using cannabis for opioid use disorder treatment may be putting themselves at risk of relapse.

    National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow has stated that there is no evidence that cannabis use is an effective treatment for opioid use disorders.

    This statement comes as NIDA is planning to assess the possibility of such a treatment, with two or three studies either planned or already underway, according to USA Today. 

    Though Volkow says it’s not impossible that cannabis compounds could help treat addiction to opioids, she stresses that no evidence exists yet.

    Meanwhile, the Maryland General Assembly is currently considering allowing medical marijuana for this purpose, and New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois have already passed laws green-lighting cannabis as an acceptable treatment for this growing issue.

    Volkow’s concern is that if cannabis compounds are not effective for treating opioid addiction, then patients being treated in this way are at high risk of relapse, and by extension, overdose and death.

    “If you don’t treat it properly, your risk of dying is quite high,” Volkow said in an interview with USA Today. “My main concern is by basically misinforming potential patients about the supposedly beneficial effects of cannabis, they may forgo a treatment that is lifesaving.”

    Opioid addiction relapse is particularly dangerous due to the fact that opioid tolerance can be drastically reduced by extended periods of non-use. If an individual relapses by going back to the same dose they were using before they quit, there is a greater chance of overdose and death.

    However, there may be some preliminary evidence on the effectiveness of cannabis in treating opioid use disorder. One 2018 study by Beth Wiese of the University of Missouri, St. Louis and Adrianne R. Wilson-Poe of the Washington University School of Medicine reviewed “emerging evidence” of this type of therapy.

    In their conclusion, they wrote that the “compelling nature of these data and the relative safety profile of cannabis warrant further exploration of cannabis as an adjunct or alternative treatment” for opioid addiction.

    For the most part, the only accepted treatments for opioid use disorders are methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone—which reduce cravings without producing a full-blown high.

    However, access to these medications can be restricted due to price, stigma, lack of education, and regulatory limits. Young people, people of color, and those living in rural communities have the most difficulty accessing this type of treatment.

    Cheryl Glenn, Maryland delegate and sponsor of the Maryland bill to allow cannabis as treatment for opioid use disorder, argues that the situation is too dire to bar people addicted to opioids from any treatment that could be effective.

    The Maryland legislature will soon consider an amendment to Glenn’s bill that would require patients to try other treatments before resorting to cannabis. Glenn currently opposes this amendment, arguing for patient choice in their health care.

    “My mother died from kidney cancer, and no one told the doctor he had to try this medication first, second or third,” she said. “I think the same respect ought to be given when you look at opioid disorders.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Does Gender-Based Violence Affect Opioid Misuse?

    Does Gender-Based Violence Affect Opioid Misuse?

    Many women who experience violence and other traumatizing situations use opioids to self-medicate, an expert suggests.

    Gender-based domestic violence plays a role in the opioid epidemic—as it relates to why women use opioids, when they access treatment, and how they are treated during overdose emergencies. 

    Writing for The Conversation, Nabila El-Bassel, professor of social work at Columbia University, said that just like women were at increased risk during the HIV epidemic because of domestic partner violence, they are at increased risk for opioid misuse today. 

    El-Bassel shared the story of Tonya, who used heroin when she anticipated being abused by her boyfriend. 

    “Tonya is only one of the hundreds of women I’ve interviewed for my research with similar stories in the span of my nearly 30-year career studying the links between intimate partner violence, sexual coercion, substance use disorders and HIV,” El-Bassel writes. 

    Many women who experience violence and other traumatizing situations use opioids as a way to self-medicate, just as Tonya did. Women who deal regularly with domestic violence often use opioids as a way to help control their emotional pain. 

    “Treatment must address the need for escape that these women seek,” El-Bassel writes.

    Yet, many women in abusive relationships have trouble accessing treatment. Partners—especially those contending with substance abuse themselves—will often undermine a woman’s attempt to get sober. This becomes yet another way that abusive partners exert dominance over the women in their lives. 

    “They can control their ability to engage in treatment, deny them potential sources of protection, and jeopardize the custody of their children to maintain control over them and, for some men, have women take care of them,” El-Bassel writes. 

    Women who are in abusive relationships often don’t feel that they can protect themselves by demanding safe sex or clean needles. Oftentimes, their partners don’t give them a choice in the matter. Because of this, harm-reduction strategies like needle exchange fail to help the most vulnerable, El-Bassel writes. 

    “Studies have shown that women are often physically or sexually abused when negotiating safe sex or refusing to engage in drug risk,” she said. 

    Alarmingly, it’s not just intimate partners who put women at higher risk for opioid abuse. Systematic gender biases also affect access to treatment, El-Bassel writes. She points to a recent study that found that women are three times less likely than men to be treated with naloxone during an overdose. 

    This “is likely due to their being devalued,” El-Bassel writes. “Emergency responders and police officers as well as family members and peers must be trained to overcome this gendered barrier and recognize signs and symptoms of overdose.”

    Overall, the treatment community needs to do a better job of understanding risk factors unique to women and providing interventions that work for this population, El-Bassel says. 

    “These issues must be changed if we are serious on addressing the opioid epidemic among women,” she writes. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Opioid Prescriptions Drop Drastically In Ohio

    Opioid Prescriptions Drop Drastically In Ohio

    Ohio’s prescription drug monitoring program played a major role in the state’s success. 

    In Ohio, a state that has been ravaged by opioid addiction, the number of opioid prescriptions has decreased by 41% since 2012, according to new data. 

    “We all have a role to play in battling this public health crisis, and this continued downward trend in opioid prescriptions demonstrates that Ohio’s prescribers are making significant progress in their efforts to prevent addiction,” Governor Mike DeWine said in a statement reported by 13 ABC News.

    “When this crisis first emerged, prescribers were led to believe that opioids were not addictive, but we know today that is not the case. It is encouraging to see such substantial progress to limit opioid prescriptions to stop painkiller abuse and diversion.”

    The data was drawn from the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy’s Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System, which monitors prescriptions being written and filled. The reporting system also showed that “doctor shopping” had decreased dramatically in the state—down 89% last year alone. 

    Steven Schierholt, executive director of the Ohio Board of Pharmacy, told the Sandusky Register last year that the prescription reporting system is an important part of monitoring the drug crisis. 

    “In order to fight our way out of this issue, we have to do so with the help of the prescribers,” he said. “There’s too much of a correlation between prescription drugs and illegal drug use to be ignored. Our goal is to provide physicians with the tools to be a part of the solution.”

    The monitoring system was established in 2006, but in 2015 it became mandatory for prescribers to use it. 

    “If you’re a prescriber you can check this system and see what controlled substance prescriptions a patient has been prescribed. That information makes for a better interact[ion] between pharmacy, doctor and patients,” Schierholt said. 

    He added that part of the reason the Ohio prescription drug monitoring program has been so successful is because it is easy to use. 

    “Now if you’re sitting with your physician she [can] see your [prescription] history with a click of button,” he said. “We know a doctor’s time is valuable and want to make it easy to check.”

    However, some data suggests that prescription drug monitoring is no longer an effective way to reduce overdose deaths, since many people have turned to illicit opioids as prescription pills become harder to access. 

    One study found that the opioid epidemic will continue to get worse if policy continues to focus only on prescription drug abuse. 

    “This study demonstrates that initiatives focused on the prescription opioid supply are insufficient to bend the curve of opioid overdose deaths in the short and medium term,” said Dr. Marc Larochelle of the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center in a press release. “We need policy, public health and health care delivery efforts to amplify harm reduction efforts and access to evidence-based treatment.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Doctors Are Cutting Back On Prescribing Opioids

    Doctors Are Cutting Back On Prescribing Opioids

    The number of doctors starting patients on opioid prescriptions also significantly declined.

    While overdose-related deaths from prescription opioids have more than quintupled over the past two decades, some encouraging news regarding the number of new opioid prescriptions written during a portion of that period has surfaced in a new study.

    Time cited research that examined national claims data culled from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which showed that the number of new opioid prescriptions issued per month dropped by 54% between 2012 and 2017—while the number of doctors issuing opioid prescriptions to patients for the first time also declined by a significant number.

    But as the study authors noted, these lower numbers were tempered by the number of physicians who continued to prescribe opioids during this time period, which was often at higher doses and for longer periods of time than the recommended limits suggested for first-time patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2016.

    Those guidelines served as the focal point for the study, which was conducted by researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy and Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Department of Medicine, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    Issued as the opioid epidemic began to reach critical numbers across the country, the CDC urged physicians to either abstain from using opioids as the first course of pain treatment, or to issue three-day supplies of opioid prescriptions at the lowest dose to first-time patients. 

    From there, researchers focused on the monthly incidence of new opioid prescriptions, which they determined was the percentage of Blue Cross Blue Shield members who were receiving an opioid prescription for either the first time ever, or for the first time in the previous six months.

    Their review of the data found that the number of new prescriptions dropped by more than half between 2012 and 2017, while the number of doctors prescribing opioids—either for the first time or to those who hadn’t received a prescription in the previous six months—declined from 114,043 to 80,462.

    “On one hand, we are very much encouraged,” said Nicole Maestas, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the study, to Time. “The study does suggest that every month, fewer people are being started on opioids, which means that the risk of developing opioid addictions and other adverse outcomes is lower because of that. Our enthusiasm is a bit tempered, however. One group of providers didn’t seem to get the message.”

    Maestas was referring to doctors who continued to prescribe opioids after the CDC issued the guidelines. Among that group, they found that 57% were prescribing them to first-time patients for longer than the three-day recommended period, and at higher doses. Of that group, 80% were primary care doctors in private practice.

    The study also raised another area of concern for Maestas and her team—it highlighted the possibility that doctors were not prescribing opioids for patients whose level of pain required such drugs. About 30% of the doctors whose prescriptions were included in the study time period did not prescribe opioids at all to people who had not used them.

    As Time noted, the authors were not able to determine if those patients were given other options for pain management, and suggested that in some cases, pain was under-managed rather than over-prescribed.

    Ultimately, the researchers hope that their findings will help hone future prescription guidelines.

    “It’s good news that some providers are changing their behavior, but not all providers are,” said Maestas. “The data suggests that some could use additional education around this issue.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Deregulating Buprenorphine Could Save Thousands Of Lives, Physicians Say

    Deregulating Buprenorphine Could Save Thousands Of Lives, Physicians Say

    Fewer than 7% of US physicians currently have the DEA waivers necessary to prescribe buprenorphine.

    An opinion piece by two physicians published in STAT Tuesday argues that deregulation of the opioid addiction treatment drug, buprenorphine, could save tens of thousands of lives every year.

    The authors, University of Rochester Professor Kevin Fiscella and Sarah E. Wakeman, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Substance Use Disorders Initiative, strongly believe that making it as easy to prescribe buprenorphine as OxyContin or fentanyl is essential to the fight to end the opioid epidemic in the U.S.

    According to Fiscella and Wakeman, less than 7% of physicians in the country currently have the DEA waivers necessary to prescribe buprenorphine.

    Buprenorphine and methadone are currently the only approved drug therapies for opioid addiction disorders and is considered much safer than prescription opioids used to treat pain.

    However, doctors and nurse practitioners must jump through extra hoops in order to obtain permission to prescribe buprenorphine, while all DEA-licensed physicians are allowed to prescribe OxyContin and fentanyl.

    According to the Florida Academy of Physician Assistants (FAPA), all physician assistants need only to take a three-hour course in order to obtain a DEA license allowing them to prescribe controlled substances, including opioids. In contrast, physician assistants must go through 24 hours of training in order to prescribe buprenorphine on top of the training for the standard DEA license.

    An increasing number of studies have found that the over-prescription of OxyContin and, more recently, the misuse of the incredibly potent opioid fentanyl together have fueled an epidemic that killed close to 50,000 people in 2017 and likely more in 2018. So why, Fiscella and Wakeman ask, is a safer opioid that is approved to treat opioid addiction more difficult to prescribe?

    In order to prescribe buprenorphine, medical professionals must complete extra training, apply for a specially marked license, and agree to allow the DEA to inspect their patient records. All of these extra steps both increase stigma against addiction disorders and place unnecessary barriers in front of what is widely considered to be effective treatment for this massive problem.

    “Patients often experience barriers trying to fill prescriptions for buprenorphine—told they cannot fill it if the “X” is missing from the prescriber’s license number—or feel shamed when filling buprenorphine prescriptions,” the authors wrote. “Some feel embarrassed telling other doctors they are taking buprenorphine.”

    Fiscella and Wakeman conclude that deregulating buprenorphine—essentially making it as easy to prescribe as OxyContin and fentanyl—would increase treatment rates for opioid addiction and cause deaths from overdose to plummet. They cite policy in France which implemented this kind of deregulation in 1995 and resulted in a whopping 80% decrease in opioid overdoses.

    “[E]ven if deregulation of buprenorphine prescribing led to ‘just’ a 50% decrease, that would mean 20,000 fewer deaths.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mobile Recovery Clinic Provides Vivitrol To Those With Opioid Addiction

    Mobile Recovery Clinic Provides Vivitrol To Those With Opioid Addiction

    The clinic is the brainchild of a registered nurse who has been sober for 13 years. 

    For many who are living with addiction, it can be difficult to get access to help, and in some rural areas, it can require extensive traveling. Now, a mobile recovery clinic travels to these people who need help.

    As CNN reports, the company behind the roving clinic—Positive Recovery Solutions—has been traveling throughout Pennsylvania in an RV, helping and treating people suffering from opioid addiction. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, overdose deaths in Pennsylvania have gone up 65% from 2015 and 2017.

    In 2017 alone, there were 5,456 overdose deaths in the state, or 43 overdoses for every 100,000 people.

    Positive Recovery Solutions was created by a woman named Amanda Cope, who is recovering from alcoholism. She told CNN, “I ended up being 27 years old, drinking two fifths of vodka a day to not be sick.”

    Cope hit bottom when she had a blackout seizure in a bar, and she finally went into rehab at the age of 28. “Once I got there, I realized how sick I was,” she continues. “My denial was thick.”

    Having the right nurse taking care of her made all the difference. “That was the first time that somebody saw me for what I was and showed me compassion and empathy… I said, ‘I’m going to be that for someone one day.’”

    Cope is now a registered nurse herself, and has been sober for 13 years. She founded Positive Recovery Solutions with her cousins, who also battled opioid addiction.

    Cope was aware that some of her patients had to travel far to get help, which is one of the reasons why she started the company.

    Patients make their way to Positive Recovery Solutions through referrals, and they use Vivitrol in their treatment program. Cope feels that the recovery process “comes from the behavioral health piece. The medication is meant, by our philosophy, to be a safety net… This safety net will keep this patient craving-free while they do the work of recovery, which is developing healthy coping mechanisms, changing behavior patterns and changing people, places and things.”

    Stuart Masula, who was addicted to painkillers and got clean with the help of Vivitrol, is now driving for Positive Recovery Solutions.

    As he told CNN, “I literally probably have the best job you could ever have. I get to go to work and see people who are trying to change their lives every single day for the better.”

    View the original article at thefix.com