Pubdate: Sat, 02 Jun 2012
Source: Windsor Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 The Windsor Star
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/501
Author: Craig Pearson

BRENTWOOD DEFENDS ADDICTION MEDICATION BAN

A sudden policy change by Brentwood Recovery Home - banning anybody 
on addiction medication such as methadone - has angered some doctors 
who call the move discriminatory. A letter dated May 16 and signed by 
Brentwood administrator Mark Lennox says that, effectively 
immediately, the residential substance- abuse facility is merely 
returning to its core beliefs of abstinence because it has more 
success keeping people sober that way.

"We're not saying drug-replacement therapy is wrong. We're saying 
it's wrong for us," Brentwood interim executive director Dan 
Soulliere said Friday.

"It just doesn't fit into our program. We're an abstinence based 
program." Soulliere said Brentwood has long tried allowing patients 
on drug-replacement therapy into its program, which lasts from 21 to 
90 days, but with limited success.

"We gave it a really good shot," Soulliere said.

"We tried it for 10 years, bringing in people who were on 
drug-replacement therapy. "But it just wasn't working. People were 
not staying sober."

Soulliere said Brentwood, founded 48 years ago by the late Fr. Paul 
Charbonneau, "is a spiritual model, not a medical model," and has 
helped thousand of people over the years.

Dr. Delmar Donald, medical director of the Sarnia-based Bluewater 
Methadone Clinic - which had been referring 10 to 30 patients a year 
to Brentwood - said the facility has a duty to open to all. Not only 
is it the only residential treatment program in this part of 
Southwestern Ontario that accepts men, but Brentwood receives $1.4 
million a year from the Ministry of Health.

"It's grossly unfair to discriminate against people when they are on 
an accepted medical therapy," said Donald, who wrote a letter 
expressing his concerns to the Erie St. Clair Local Health 
Integration Network. "Not only is it accepted, it is the first choice 
medical therapy for many people who have done infinitely better than 
by abstaining."

Donald said the majority of patients battle addictions well with such 
medications as Suboxone, which are prescribed and monitored by 
physicians, but occasionally a patient fares better with a 
combination of medicine and residential treatment.

"I would be interested to know what the Ontario Human Rights 
Commission would say about this, because addictions are defined as 
disabilities," Donald said. "So essentially Brentwood is declining to 
admit someone because of a disability."

Donald said that sometimes courts or employers require people 
battling substance abuse to enter residential treatment programs. He 
noted that one of his patients, a young woman who relapsed with 
cocaine use, had her children taken away by the local Children's Aid 
Society. The CAS sent her children to stay with their grandparents 
until she can complete a treatment program.

She was on the list to enter Brentwood but just found out that she 
will not be admitted because she uses what doctors call opiate 
agonists, such as methadone.

"This really boils down to ideology," Donald said. "And there are 
problems when you become ideological. They're taking it to the degree 
that they consider even certain medication equivalent to street drugs."

Gary Switzer, CEO of the Erie St. Clair LHIN - which funds a third of 
Brentwood's 120 beds - feels that residential and drug-replacement 
programs don't work well together.

"I support Brentwood 100 per cent," he said. "They're sticking to 
their knitting and getting the results that they want.

"Methadone is treated as an outpatient clinic. You do not require the 
residential program. And best practice shows that you don't mix the 
two." Switzer said keeping an abstinence-based program does not hurt anybody.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom