Cedar Recovery has opened its newest addiction recovery center in Cookeville.
Chief Medical Officer Stephen Loyd said they offer medication for opioid abuse treatment, behavioral therapy, and treatment plans. Loyd said very few substance abusers seek treatment and judgment has a lot to do with that.
“The biggest thing we have to overcome is stigma,” Loyd said. “Only about one in ten people with any type of substance abuse disorder even seeks treatment. And that’s a really low number. If you look at the number of people we treat for diabetes or hypertension it’s pretty close to eight or nine out of ten.”
Loyd said compared to other diseases, stigma plays a huge role in deterring people from getting treatment.
Loyd said he would compare it to the HIV crisis in the 1980s and 1990s when people wouldn’t tell anyone they had a problem.
“The stigma of that disease prevented people from letting anyone know they had it, and being scared, and all the other things that went along with it,” Loyd said. “And we didn’t really make any progress until we addressed the stigma.”
Loyd said Cedar Recovery works through issues of stigma, addiction, and behavior with the tools of medication and therapy.
“Medical literature since about 1965 has supported the use of medication as part of the comprehensive treatement program,” Loyd said.
He said the real work goes into addressing the drivers of addiction, what motivates the addiction. He said some people work through that diligently and others may remain on medication.
“But they’re not putting a needle in their arm, they’re not at risk of HIV or Hep-C, and a lot of them have jobs and famlies and go about their lives, and that’s not a bad thing,” Loyd said.
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