Our Road Ahead

The world is not flat. People are lonelier and more emotionally vulnerable than ever. We're hurting. Stuck in a flywheeling mental health crisis with addiction, overdose and suicide numbers increasing at increasing rates.

Many are so lonely and desperate for relief, turning to AI chatbots or Amazon retreats that are sketchy at best while the addiction healthcare system is stuck in the last century. This is healthcare. Science needs to replace ideology. We need new roads to get us to where we need to be.

Science will drive us out of the addiction crisis. Science is not any one thing, discipline, or really anything on its own- rather, an approach. A methodical process. Shockingly, there isn’t much scientific methodology in addiction healthcare.

There is an absolute desert of rigorously peer reviewed outcome data or independent research supporting the prevailing rehab model. Counterintuitively, our current treatment system is driven by ideology, not science and medicine. One-size-fits-all has been played out in cliche but is still the gold standard. There has been resistance to change with virtually no innovation in decades. What would be malpractice anywhere else in healthcare is a daily occurrence in a typical ‘rehab’.? Just as many of our superhighways were once footpaths, we need to evolve out of this obsolete system. We’ve invested in more tow trucks but failed to build better roads.?

The good news is that we can overhaul the existing ecosystem efficiently and effectively. New highways will integrate services, providing integrated and comprehensive care. We can benefit from medications and technology that are readily available, well researched yet underutilized. We can erode barriers and stigmatizations to make support more accessible and equitable. Lastly, we can update our paradigm from powerless, chronically diseased to empowered with potential to heal.

Why then, I ask, does the system insist on doing things the same way over and over again with the same unacceptable results? Doesn’t the psychoeducational curriculum teach the opposite? Why does addiction treatment need to be so siloed off from the rest of healthcare? It is not so terminally unique.

I would love to engage in discussion with colleagues from the addiction treatment world. Unfortunately, most of these calls go unanswered. There has been more regressive stigma from within the provider community than the public. No irony that this community is populated with so many people in recovery themselves, vulnerable to projection and transference. We need to do better. Let’s work together, not polarize. In the midst of skyrocketing overdoses becoming a leading cause of death for young adults, now is a great time to start. The world is no longer flat.