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Author Topic: Georgia losing patience with "drug treatment tourism" -(Article about my clinic)  (Read 6859 times)

Offline gnossos (OP)

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http://www.sltrib.com/home/5248098-155/georgia-losing-patience-with-drug-treatment




Ringgold, Ga. • In the northwest corner of Georgia, where cows and crops vastly outnumber people, a small cluster of privately owned treatment centers has sprung up in recent years for heroin and prescription painkiller addicts.
And most of the patients aren't even from the state.
Relaxed rules in Georgia and stricter regulations in Tennessee created a recipe for the facilities to locate a few miles from the state line. Each year, the Georgia centers draw thousands of addicts from Tennessee, some who drive for hours to get treatment. Locals are fed up with the onslaught of out-of-towners who pick up their meds and leave, and they complained so loudly that Georgia legislators recently passed a law essentially preventing any new clinics from opening up in the area.

"Georgia is getting inundated with these treatment centers and they're really drawing patients in from outside of our area and that's a big concern," Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk said. "We can't be the solution for all the surrounding states."
Georgia leads the South in number of treatment centers with 71. Florida, with twice the population, has 69.
Last year, one in five people treated at an opioid treatment center in Georgia came from out of state, according to state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities records obtained by The Associated Press under an open records request.
In the northwest corner of Georgia, two out of every three patients were from out of state.
Sisk has been with the sheriff's office for 27 years. He said that with the growth of the treatment industry, he worries about increasing crime, including parking lot brawls and people driving after abusing their medication.
Patients and treatment center owners say the sheriff's concerns are overblown and perpetuate the stigma of trouble around facilities that are often disparagingly called "methadone clinics." A 2016 report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that, in general, there is more crime associated with a convenience store than opioid treatment programs. Counseling is also a large part of successful treatment.
"Medication is really the smallest part of what we do," said Zac Talbott, the owner of Counseling Solutions in Chatsworth, Georgia, one of the five facilities near the state line.
The shortage of treatment facilities is a problem nationwide. More than a dozen states have fewer than 10 clinics each.
In 2015, fewer than 20 percent of people who needed addiction treatment received it, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
One of Talbott's patients is Ashley Gardner, who lives two hours away in Maryville, Tennessee. The 34-year-old woman said her addiction started in the seventh grade when she wanted to numb the pain after she was sexually assaulted. She was assaulted another time, and saw both fathers of her two children die from an opioid overdose.
She said her parents disowned her, and by the time she was ready to get help, she was sneaking pain pills out of an emergency room and shooting up in the hospital parking lot.
Gardner has tried treatment facilities closer to her house in Tennessee, but she said they were overcrowded and expensive. Instead, she travels to Georgia where methadone, her preferred medication, is cheaper. Tennessee Medicaid doesn't cover the drug, and she pays for it out of pocket in Georgia.
"It's about half a tank of gas to get down here. But it's worth it you know? I mean, it's saving my life," she said. "It wouldn't really matter if it was a full tank to me."
When patients first start receiving methadone, they have to take the medicine at the center and are permitted to take only one dose home per week. As patients build trust with their therapist and pass drug tests, they are slowly allowed to take a few doses home at a time. It takes two years of continuous treatment before a patient can take home a month's worth of methadone.
Other drugs approved by U.S. regulators to treat opioid addiction do not need to be administered at special treatment facilities the way methadone does, and doctors have been turning to them more often in recent years.



A couple months ago the press showed up at my methadone clinic, (the Associated Press, to be exact). Been waiting for this article to surface and here it is. I'm pissed off about it to the point that I couldn't even finish the whole thing. I talked to the fuckers that wrote this and if I had known this was the angle they would take, I would have had a LOT more to say to them.


The original article from Associated Press seems to have disappeared just since yesterday and the other links don't contain the entire article... Hmmm... Where to even begin?


"Sisk has been with the sheriff’s office for 27 years. He said that with the growth of the treatment industry, he worries about increasing crime, including parking lot brawls and people driving after abusing their medication."[color=rgb(255, 255, 255) !important]


??? Of course, cause I see people fight all the time in the parking lot...
[/color]
« Last Edit: June 06, 2017, 09:51:39 AM by gnossos »
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. : cause every junkies like a settin' sun : .

Offline FreedomOrBust

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Sisk added that he prefers to thin out the junkie population by forcing them back into the streets to buy insanely priced dope of uncertain origin and quality. And, for those addicts that don't overdose or die from impure cuts, Sisk believes that the threat of zero-tolerance laws and even capital punishment will solve the remainder of the problem.

"Junkies are inherently evil people" added Sisk.  "And besides, they don't vote, so their problems don't matter to the rest of us".
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Rich Blokes Smoke Dokes.

Offline bonedust

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Sisk can go get poked by a dirty needle.
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"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."-Malcolm X

Offline gnossos (OP)

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@FreedomOrBust - HOW IN THE ABSOLUTE FUCK IS THIS SHIT JUST HAPPENING??? A person of power in America saying whatever the fuck they want to degrade, shame and repress an entire demographic of people... Sounds pretty familiar... It's only downhill from here...



Aw... @bonedust always with the snarky remarks. ;D We should all start hoarding away all our used/dirtiest of rigs for a demonstration: take 'em right to the Sisk and all like him and toss 'em all over the ground! Maybe if he happens to catch hepatitis or something, he'll have a better understanding of the shit we deal with as addicts on a daily basis and have at least the tiniest iota of compassion for his fellow humans. ^_~
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. : cause every junkies like a settin' sun : .

Offline OpiXPO

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He's worried about the increase in crime? Well then I guess he needs to get off his ass and do the job he was elected to.  But really, critical thinking, there has already been a dramatic increase in patients, and there clearly hasn't been a ride in crime yet, or else it damn well would have been referred to saying it's already a problem that's just getting worse. Instead he makes up a weak excuse to deny people help from being productive members of society, and is even stunting his own community's growth. That's tax money right there.
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