People have a stereotype in mind when they think about heroin addiction, and it’s not a pretty picture. Based on stigma that was bred back in the 1970s and 1980s, any picture that you draw of your average heroin junkie will probably feature a tall, skinny, dirty male, with wild hair and wilder eyes, wearing grungy clothes, scratching absent-mindedly, and pan-handling for money. Cross the street, ...
Fighting Shame With Methadone or Suboxone Treatment
Organizations like Stop Stigma Now do much to combat the stigma that comes with opiate addiction and especially with methadone or Suboxone treatment. When you go beyond Webster’s definition of stigma—a mark of reproach or disgrace—we are brought to the edge of absolute shame that often comes with opiate addiction. Those feelings can become overwhelming if you don’t know how to overcome them, but ...
Stop Stigma Now: Medication Assisted Treatment Recovery
No matter how pretty the patina that we apply to the science of medication assisted treatment, there will be people who denigrate it, decry it, or declare it an unhealthy substitution of one addiction for another. The people who suffer from opioid addiction live day in and day out feeling the effects of this stigma cast by their family, friends, and others they care about. Those are the people who ...