Imagine this:
Your adult son/daughter lives in your home and you know they inject heroin on a regular basis. You're fully aware that each injection could kill them even before they pull the needle out of their arm, leg, neck, face or on rare occasion, butt.[1] Or perhaps she/he is on the street, homeless and yet, from time to time, reaches out to you by phone when a phone is available. Something happens within him/her one day and they turn to you for guidance on how to separate themselves from this entity named "Addict.".
This is your big opportunity to guide your child, your flesh of your flesh, your bone of your bone, your extension of you into a better and healthier life. He/She has stepped away ever so briefly from the torment of "Addict" and wants a complete separation and divorce from it.
You know from past experience that your local emergency room will not provide any substantial treatment so you turn to Facebook and an online support group. You pose the following question and receive a dizzying array of answers:[2]
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Mom: My son wants to go away, as soon as possible to a 30-day program. Is there any help for him? Where can I take him?
Comments:
I think 30 days is not enough time but god bless him
Mom: You are right, I just meant not a 5 day, 60-90 day program.
Try and get him to Eagleville.
Call Eagleville or Malvern
The Phoenix Recovery Project
Take him to the Net at 5th and Spring Garden. They will treat him while they find a bed for him.
You should try to take him out of your area.
Florida is the best thing I did for myself.
No please don't send him to Florida!!!!! There was just a post about Florida please stop saying Florida its not for everybody and a lot of body brokers out there keeping them high.....
Try Eagleville, keep him close!
I am not sure what body brokers are I just know for me it was the best thing.
Teen Challenge
Teen Challenge is for adults and teens.
Mom: He is an adult.
That is fine it is for adults also. Great program
Mom: (He has city) and state insurance
Call Teen Challenge (in your city)
Try Eagleville they're a walk in.
So is Horsham Clinic.
See if your ins will pay for the Retreat at Lancaster County
Look at Horsham or Malvern, or Eagleville and while he’s there look for extended care PHPs or IOPs going down in levels of care each step, it’s really up to your son to take advantage wherever he goes, but the more TREATMENT he gets the more of a chance he has.
Teen Challenge seems like they have all those things including detox.
They don’t I’ve been there.
Pennsylvania Adult & Teen Challenge is a leading drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation treatment center that provides highly specialized treatment by offering medically-monitored inpatient detoxification, 30-day inpatient clinic…
Kirkbride
Recovery Centers of America in Devon is an incredible place. 1 800 recovery is the phone number.
He can't get medical clearance for treatment so he goes ROUND & ROUND UGH
Mom: Thank you all. It does go around and around.
Pyramid, white deer run, Eagleville, valley forge, colonial house, fire tree, Malvern, treatment trends
Valley Forge and White Deer Run knew me by my first name
Net 5th n Spring Garden usually places within 48 hrs food, warm n comfort meds
Get him somewhere asap no time to Waste.
Malvern. There’s one in willow grove and one in Malvern
Self Help 215-677-7778
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As the clock ticks and you are trying to sort this out so as to try to save your child's life, you're aware that at a minimum, she/he will inject 1 to 4 (or more) bags of heroin approximately every four hours so as not to become dope sick. From their perspective, even though they truly want to get away from this entity named Addict, they must continue to consume their "medicine" so as to avoid the horrendous symptoms that come with dope sickness.
Depending on where he/she buys these bags, the price per bag will be $5.00 to $10.00 each. Do the math. That's $5.00 to $40.00 per injection every four hours around the clock until treatment can begin.
For your son, that's a lot of panhandling at a local intersection or hauling of scrap metal to the local junkyard or theft or, in rare cases, some aspect of drug distribution itself.
For your daughter, at $10.00 to $30.00 per "date,"[3] that's a lot of sexual activity the awareness of which breaks your heart and that often brings her to heavy tears as she's trying to apply her makeup while gazing into a random piece of broken mirror or at her reflection in the side window of a parked van.
Wouldn't it be better for everyone involved if your daughter or son could enter any emergency room or urgent care facility and say "I need detox and rehab." The professionals in these facilities would then have the opportunity to fully live up to their Hippocratic Oath:
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.
What if Emergency Rooms Treated Opioid-Addicted Patients?
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