Excerpted from:
http://www.wvprc.org/about/docs/eval-docs/Purdue.pdfIn February 2004, the Charleston Daily Mail reported on a Boone County man who,
addicted to OxyContin, entered a methadone clinic in Charleston. Over a reported three
years and $25,000 later, he was examined by a doctor just once, had gone six months
without speaking to a counselor, and was never encouraged to lower his dosage.
“(Methadone) manages a disease for which there is not a cure, like high blood pressure,”
said Phil Herschman of CRC Health Group, which operates the Charleston clinic. “How
often does a physician suggest you stop insulin?” (The article reported that CRC plans
to introduce a “methadone-to-abstinence” program in 2004, which will take an addict two
to three years to complete.) Desperate to come completely off the methadone, the Boone
County man underwent Rapid Detox at the Coleman Center. “It’s unbelievable how I’m
doing,” he told the Daily Mail. “It’s indescribable to wake up and not feel like I have to
depend on something to function.… What aggravates me, at the [methadone] clinic, they
say they are a treatment center. And they call you a patient. I don’t think I’m a patient.
I’m a client. I’m buying drugs from a legal drug dealer.”
