So many people are getting addicted to different kinds of drugs, specifically opioids. This problem is becoming more serious each day as it is affecting more lives and causing big problems to society. Although there are addiction treatments available, it seems not enough with how worse the problem has become. But there is good news. A new prescription drug is now available to give hope to opioid addicts.
For 16 years, prescription opioids ruled Jo Pagel’s life. From 2001 to 2017, she battled cancerous tumors in her breasts, lymph nodes and uterus while fighting an addiction to OxyContin.”I didn’t know a thing about it,” Pagel, 63, told the Rapid City Journal of the drug, which was prescribed to her in 2001 to quell pain from her cancer treatments, surgeries, and neuropathy in her hands and feet. “I just knew I wanted to beat my cancer. Whatever my doctors told me I needed to do to beat my cancer, that’s what I was going to do.”
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Pagel has since beat cancer three times and retired from a 35-year career teaching physical education for the Rapid City School District. But her struggles with OxyContin continued until another drug, now being offered in Rapid City, helped her kick her addiction.
In late September, the Addiction Recovery Centers of the Black Hills held Rapid City’s first complete medication-assisted treatment (MAT) clinic.
Alongside traditional addiction treatment like counseling, doctors in the clinic with a special certification also have the option to prescribe patients Suboxone, a drug crafted to lessen the effects of opioid withdrawal, give users a very slight high meant to kill cravings, and block certain brain receptors, preventing patients from getting a real high should they relapse. It’s the first center in Rapid City to offer the full range of MAT, with counseling and the administering of Suboxone under one roof.
