The Nurse with the Terrible Advice

I apologize in advance for this formatting, I've been doing a lot of posting from my phone and don't proofread like I should.

I have been thinking about something over the past couple of days and maybe if I write about it I'll be able to get some peace.  

In the fall of 2015 I was at a residential rehab facility for the second time.  I was homeless and that seemed like the best option.  Most residential programs start off with 5-7 days of detox and then they get moved to a different unit for about 20-30 days.  For the detox portion of the stay at this facility, you were made comfortable with suboxone and other medications.  On day 7 you were pretty much thrown into chaos.  You move your belongings into a dorm like situation with about a hundred other people and spend the remaining time there.  You aren't getting any kind or medication unless you came in on it.

When I was waiting to do my detox intake I would see people coming in and out of the adjoining building.  It turns out that the rehab also doubled as a methadone clinic.  I knew nothing about methadone and how it worked at this time but I learned that patients that were at this rehab would be receiving their methadone daily if they wanted to.  

I found it weird that some people would be getting this every day and others wouldn't.  I felt terrible that morning and had already been in detox for a few hours.  I was talking to a nurse that was assessing my withdrawal symptoms and I told her that I wanted to start taking methadone to help in my recovery.  This is how that interaction went

Me: This building dispenses methadone to people correct?  The girl in the next room took hers this morning and I would really like to start that too please.

Nurse (annoyed): Did you come in as a methadone patient?

Me: No, I came in addicted to heroin

Nurse: Well we don't start people on that here.  You would have had to be on it at the time of being admitted.  You don't want to be on that crap anyways.  You will have to take it every day and then you'll be addicted to that too.  

Me: So there's no way to start and become a patient so I can take it throughout my stay here?  I don't mind having to take it every day and I am supposed to meet with the doctor later today.

Nurse: No, that's not going to happen.  You don't want that addiction too.

I stayed in detox for 5 more days and then spent the following three weeks in the residential unit.  Once I left I relapsed and had the worst year of my life.  I was living in a car and getting high every day, slowly deteriorating into a shell of who I used to be.  I did some things that I still have nightmares about and that I can't even talk about in therapy.  

Had I been able to access the maintenance medication that I needed at that time, I could have been spared much of the heartache that I experienced that winter. If the nurse had been encouraging and open minded about an available form of treatment things might have been different for me.  

Is it her fault that I continued to get high once I left? Absolutely not. Those were all my choices.  I made them and I am responsible for the damage that I caused as a result of those choices.  What she did do though, was let her own personal bias get in the way of treating her patients.  How many other people has she steered away from this life saving medication?  Does she realize how much methadone has helped people historically to regain control of their lives?  She didn't give me that option. 

 There are so many others out there that think like that too.  Methadone clinics are sometimes referred to as "legal dope houses".  This makes us all look bad.  The people with these opinions don't see the mother drinking her coffee, nursing her baby, and paying her electric bill.  They see the underweight addict rocking back and forth in line outside of the clinic.  I am/was both of those people at one time in my life.  There needs to be a change in the perception of people on MMT and it needs to start with our healthcare providers.  There is no room for bias and judgements for people that are just trying to survive and regain control of their lives.

I'm sure glad that I never took her advice.