Imagine the worst of flu symptoms — complete with vomiting, diarrhea and severe body aches — then multiply that misery by 100, and that’s how recovering heroin users describe the feeling of withdrawal.
“Withdrawing from opiates isn’t life-threatening — it’ll just make you want to die,” said John Horsley, director of addiction services for Oaklawn, which operates mental health centers in Elkhart and St. Joseph counties.
Yet, as the South Bend area battles an epidemic of heroin and opiate painkiller abuse, experts say the region lacks the type of medical care that could help users overcome the physical anguish and intense cravings that keep most of them from quitting and staying clean.
Addiction specialists have raised concerns that St. Joseph County has no inpatient medical “detox” facility designed for users to go through the first few days of withdrawal with the help of medication while under supervision in a hospital-type setting.
Moreover, those who make it through detox have little access to doctors who can set up an ongoing medication plan to keep addictions in check. Such a regimen is known as “substitution therapy” because it replaces a user’s opioid of choice with a safer medication.
Joe Smith, a recovering heroin user who lives in Goshen, said he went through intense withdrawal symptoms for up to three weeks every time he tried to quit. Since he started a Suboxone regimen in February, he said, he has managed to stay clean without suffering from the worst withdrawal symptoms and the overpowering cravings that come later.
“With Suboxone, it’s a thousand times better,” he said. “You’re not walking around puking, you’re not walking around sweating to death.”
Without help from medication, combined with addiction counseling, most users have no realistic shot at recovery, ending up back on the streets, in an emergency room or — in the worst-case scenario — dead from an overdose, the experts said.