Meth Clinic Myths
My name is Rayelle Davis and throughout my career I have worked as an addiction counselor. My experience includes working at an inpatient rehab and a medication assisted treatment facility or “meth clinic”. I have a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and as such I have conducted several sessions to provide education to the loved ones of people suffering from addiction. I am glad there is more awareness of addiction, but any comments section proves there are still a lot of myths and misinformation out there. I get it. Even though a good portion of my life is spent studying and working with addictions it can be frustrating because it’s a pretty complicated subject. I haven’t really come across much locally that depicts the counselor perspective. I wanted to share my thoughts. Please be mindful that nothing I say represents the viewpoints of any place I work and I don’t represent all counselors. This is based on my own experience and observations through the lens of a counselor and student.
I was a nontraditional college student, so I had some real-life experiences and opinions before I was in a college classroom. Like many people around me I thought “meth clinic” sounded scary and addicts “should just quit”. In grad school we are taught to become aware of our biases to reduce any harm to clients and I went into the program pretty sure I could never be an addictions counselor. I had a family member struggling with addiction and I saw the hurt and pain it caused loved ones. I was one of them. Why couldn’t they just stop? Why did they choose this in the first place? I was surprised to learn that not everyone who tries drugs was automatically addicted. Once I learned that the experts don’t know what causes one person to be addicted and the next person not to be, I relaxed my opinion and opened my mind a little more. That concept made sense to me because I was raised during the “War on Drugs”. I switched schools in 5th grade so I went through D.A.R.E. twice. I never really considered that someone could try crack cocaine and not completely destroy their life. I was holding on to my 5th grade education on how drugs work and therefore struggling to understand why someone would try such things in the first place. Through my advanced studies it made sense that someone might not think they have a real problem but in actuality they lose everything. Addiction impacts the way the brain processes. This means we non-addicts can’t take how we would react to a situation and expect someone in active addiction to look at it the same way. Their brain is screaming for more of their drug of choice and often priorities become out of whack.
I think what makes providing and understanding addiction treatment hard in general is that everyone is different. You may have heard the term spectrum referring to someone with Autism. That means that one person with Autism may not have the same level of functioning or support needs as another person with Autism. There are levels. Addiction acts much the same way. Many people hear addiction or addict and they picture someone on skid row with a needle. They are seen as choosing that lifestyle over being with their families who want nothing more than to get their loved one back. This is where it gets complicated. Are there people out there who when faced with eviction, job loss or their loved ones kicking them out that become motivated to stop through sheer will power? Yes. This approach does not work for everyone. It doesn’t mean they love their families less. It means their addiction has a stronger hold. At the opposite end of the spectrum, people die.
Different substances bring different issues with them. Opiates come with withdrawal symptoms that can be severe. It can last for months and send users into what I have heard described as a mental hell on top of debilitating flu symptoms. No one wakes up and wants to be the person on skid row with a needle. Many people in recovery have families and jobs and pay their taxes, but they were prescribed some powerful pain killers following surgery or an injury that led them to become addicted. One person can take those pills and not have their life ruined, but another person responds differently. In addition to physical dependency, many use the pills as a go to coping mechanism when they are faced with stress due to the feel good effects pain killers produce. Some decide they need help and seek it. Others may progress to heroin as a desperate and cheaper alternative when they can’t get the pills anymore. Some were spending time with all the wrong people and started using to fit in. Some people have suffered horrendous trauma and use to dull their emotional pain. Some people came from good families who are struggling to understand what went wrong. Some were brought up around drinking and drugging since kindergarten. It was their normal. It is very common for people in substance abuse treatment to realize they have mental health issues they were unaware of or not dealing with. These things take time to process and everyone responds differently to treatments offered.
At a methadone clinic they are provided a legal dose of medication prescribed by a doctor and dispensed by a nurse to combat the physical symptoms. No one can benefit from counseling if they are in full blown withdrawal. Treatment is often done in layers and since everyone has a different level of suffering the layers are different. Counseling is a requirement and it is within this setting people can learn healthier coping skills to practice. Someone can complete treatment in a year and someone else might need three. They are in recovery for life and this is another topic many people struggle to understand, wondering why their loved one is “still going to those meetings” or “still can’t handle a beer.” Inpatient rehab is not how it is depicted on television. There are criteria that need to be met for admission. It is not like Intervention or Celebrity Rehab. Desperate families go through the channels to send their loved one to rehab are often saddened to realized they don’t walk out “cured.” In fact, that is when the real work begins.
It’s important to note that most things that lead to addiction are legal- pills prescribed by a doctor, alcohol sold on the shelves of your local store, consensual sex, and even food. These can progress to people doing illegal things to feed their addiction or to continue behaving in way that is causing them harm. I understand why people in the community are scared and frustrated. Unfortunately, the best treatment in the world can’t help someone who doesn’t want it. Even so too many shy away from getting help for fear of stigma and shame. Our individualistic culture has people thinking they are weak for needing help. We also avoid pain including emotional pain. These cultural attitudes create a perfect storm for addiction to take hold and explode to where it can’t be ignored. These stigmas are often what keeps someone from seeking mental health treatment and they self-medicate instead. This self-medicating can lead to addiction. It is all a part of a vicious cycle. It is my hope that through increased understanding more people will be encouraged to get proper treatment. If someone you love is suffering from the epidemic gripping our area, I hope you are in counseling for yourself. This is especially recommended for the parents. We have a generation of grandparents raising grandchildren and to not “be an enabler” often means to go against our basic instinct as parents. Role confusion and grief are real experiences when you have a loved one in active addiction. It is common for people to say “what can we do?” I believe that with increased understanding, we can work together and the negative impact will be lessened. If you have children and a family history of any type of addiction, I encourage you to have that conversation with your kids when appropriate. Genetic predisposition is a risk factor. It doesn’t guarantee your kid is doomed to suffer addiction, but just as we talk about heart disease, diabetes, and cancer we need to bring our family mental health history into common conversation as well.
We can come together as a community and reduce the stigma so that families and addicts feel supported. We can stop spreading untruths. Awareness and educational conversations don’t have to cost a dime. With so many things about addiction and treatment being out of our control, being empathetic to these challenges and challenging myths and stereotypes is something that we can do. The real “cure” for addiction is true belonging and human connection. The most effective intervention we have is each other.
Rebel Well My Friends.
Rayelle Davis is a Nationally Board Certified Counselor licensed in Maryland and West Virginia. She is an expert content reviewer for highered.com and a faculty trainer for the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Her research on the diseases of despair and Appalachia fuels her mission to build community centered around accurate and decolonized mental health education.
