As Promised– A person who hates psychiatrists and suboxone.

This is the letter I referred to yesterday… check this out.  Interesting perpective… if you live on Mars anyway.  My answers are interspersed with her questions.
Are you a psychiatrist? yes, I am a Board Certified Psychiatrist. I find this website disgusting…the picture of a person with a needle about to shoot upI have thought about that picture from time to time—about whether it is appropriate. I don’t want to glamorize drug use, and hope it does not do that. I want it to be disgusting, so I like this writer’s feedback. I don’t know if she has any understanding of addiction, but opiate dependence, as many of you can attest, is not glamorous! It is disgusting—not in the way the patient suggests, as she sounds like she would be happy to have more stigma imposed on the treatment of addiction, when if anything the stigma already present keeps many people from seeking help. As for the picture, opiate dependence is disgusting and more—it killed a friend of mine, it destroyed one of my careers (as an anesthesiologist), almost ended my marriage, and caused tremendous pain for my family over the years. At the same time, I want to attract people to this blog, and the picture grabs the attention of most opiate addicts. and all your jargon about suboxone which is just another terribly addicting opiate drug As regular readers know, buprenorphine, the active ingredient in Suboxone, is a ‘partial agonist’ at opiate receptors. The result is a completely different effect on a person when taken in sufficient dose: the complete elimination of the desire to use. I got clean in a locked psych ward, ‘kicking it’ over a hellish week and then going into three months of residential treatment followed by years of group therapy, AA and NA meetings… many people die before going into such treatment. The treatment cost me $15 K per month— and is likely even more costly now as this was almost 10 years ago. We sold our vacation cottage to get by and to pay for treatment. I’m not complaining, as I am grateful to be alive. But I am trying to put Suboxone into context—now we have a way to intervene much earlier in the addictive process. It does not ‘cure’, but it sure beats using. It costs a lot less than using also! I am sure you are making a lot of money off of these people who are fooled into the “miracle drug” talk. How many people do you have on this drug as well as benzos? Hmmm…. If you read many of the posts at this site you will see that I hate benzos. I often give my opinion about them—that they turn manageable anxiety into an unmanageable anxiety disorder. How do they do that? By creating tolerance for their effects. After a person becomes tolerant to Xanax, for example, the person develops anxiety every time their last dose wears off. What else did you accuse me of… Oh yes.  You are sure I make a lot of money from the ‘miracle drug’ talk. I guess that depends on how one defines ‘a lot of money’. I make a lot more than I did at my job at True Value Hardware in Beloit Wisconsin, but I was only 16 years old so my expenses were lower! I borrowed $120,000 after college so that I could go to med school, so I spent all my True Value money and also all the money I made working at Taco Johns (sort of like a ‘poor-man’s Taco Bell’). I made tons of money as an anesthesiologist—half a million per year! It is a frightening job—you get these tiny peewee babies who need their stomachs cut open for repair of pyloric stenosis and it is SCARY—all anesthesiologists are scared for that one, and if they aren’t, they should be. Who wants to tell a mother that you killed her newborn? So that paid very well, and I liked it very much… I liked the trauma, the blood, the anger at times as I argued with surgeons over how much more surgery and blood loss a patient would tolerate before everything goes to hell (anger doesn’t have to end a friendship, y’know?). Opiate addiction took that career from me. You want to guess how long it took? I was a good anesthesiologist– and good at working with others.  I was elected Chief every two years; I was the most requested anesthesiologist in the group; I was on all the hot-shot hospital committees; I was called for the ‘tough cases’… how much opiate use did it take to destroy ten years of what I considered a solid career? About five months of use. That’s it. Anyway, then I made nothing at all two for two years… we had to sell the vacation cottage that my kids really loved—still hurts to think about it. Then as a resident in Psychiatry I made about 40K per year—more than True Value anyway! Now I am making about what solo psychiatrists in Wisconsin make. As far as the ‘miracle drug’, I don’t call it a miracle because I have high standards for miracles. But for people who have not experienced many miracles, Suboxone is pretty wonderful.  They are afraid that they will never be free of the horrible obsession that is destroying them, and then Suboxone frees them— they are the ones calling it a miracle. You should read some of their stories more closely—you might me impressed.. How many people do you “subjectively” diagnose as BIPOLAR, ADD, SAD, OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER and all the other worthless diagnosis you need to put down for a diagnosis so you can milk the insurance companies and then get people addicted to stuff to create more of an income for yourself? That is an insulting question, don’t you think?  I thought maybe deep down you liked me… but now I am starting to wonder!  I hate to label people, particularly with the ‘bipolar’ label. One thing that really bugs me is a case where mom and dad fight every night, and sometimes even take a swat at at their kid. The kid starts acting out, so that mom and dad focus on him—  when he gets in trouble it seems from the kid’s perspective that the parents are getting together and worrying about him, which is better than them fighting. So the kid is selflessly helping the family, in a way acting like the smartest person in the family… and he gets labeled ‘bipolar’, gets put on depakote which makes him morbidly obese so he gets picked on…. No, I don’t like to place labels on people, especially bipolar which is mostly, in my opinion, overdiagnosed in children.  I think many kids labelled ‘bipolar’ really have Borderline PD. By the way, writer, you sound a bit ‘borderline’. No big deal, but I just get that impression… Oh, one more thing. I collect at the time of service, so I don’t milk ‘insurers’. I bill insurers, but only as a favor for the patients have already paid their bills. And if a person wants to make money doing this you don’t carry people for long term as I do, because their is a limit on the number of people you can carry. Instead, the people who make lots of money from Suboxone tend to use it to detox people only, then send them out again.  Those people all relapse, but the doctor can keep the high- paying new patients rolling in. Do you tell these people how hard it will be to get off of this drug and that it is an opiate? Well, it isn’t really an opiate. I guess it depends on your definition of ‘opiate’. Does it stimulate the opiate receptor? Yes, to some extent. Is it structurally similar to other opiates? No, it is not. I tell people the truth—that on the drug they will be ‘in remission’, assuming they take it only once per day, as directed. I tell them to consider it a long term medication. I tell them that I don’t have great options once they are on Suboxone, but that one thing is clear… they are better off on Suboxone than they were before Suboxone. They are spending a fraction of what they used to spend. Their mind is free to think of other things. Their moods have improved.  By all accounts it is not that hard to get off; most of the people I helped taper off Suboxone did well and said it was easier than coming off of true agonists. I am coming up with a recorded plan of action for people on Suboxone by the way… and yes, I will be selling it for a reasonable price. Yes, you could find the information here and there, but if you purchase
it from me it helps me to justify the blog.  Plus, I do have some unique ideas I think– something positive from the ashes!  So readers, consider checking out one of my recordings! I guarantee that there will be a class action lawsuit about this drug. No one is telling the truth about it and creepy, lying doctors like yourself are the first ones that should be sued.How can you live with yourself? Your are a money grubbing greed driven disgust. Creepy?  OK, that’s enough– it looks like our friendship is over.  Baby, my life is an open book. You can read about me on my web site—how I dove into the cold current of a river and saved the life of a woman ( with schizophrenia, ironically) when I was 19 (photos of the articles can be found here). You can read my publications as a scientist on my primary practice site, fdlpsychiatry.com. And you can read about my fall from grace, documented in men’s health. Just google ‘the junkie in the OR’’ and that is me! I am truly blessed by the jobs I have had—I had the opportunity to save the lives of several people as a physician, including a thirteen year old by who nobody else could intubate—and I did. He had hung himself in the midst of one of your imaginary psych diseases, called depression. I know three people who died last year, who were not on Suboxone, who would be alive today were they on it. My only regret is not pushing it on them.  How can you live with yourself? Your are a money grubbing greed driven disgust. Ahem… the more I think about it I realize you don’t even know me… Selling tapes about opiate treatment? How kind of you to offer payment with PAYPAL. You prefer Google Checkout? Opiate addicts spend from $100 to $300 per DAY on oxy… a twenty dollar tape is a bargain. Thanks for another plug.  I have been through addiction, almost died from it… I have been through the decisions… I’m a pretty good source of info. Patients pay $350 to sit with me and hear the same thing, so the recordings are a good deal. Maybe this will be proof that someone can use when they sue you for lies about the drugs you prescribe.Now you are losing me. Tell me a lie, just out of curiosity… because I don’t know what you are thinking about or referring to, and frankly I’m worried about you just a bit! Psychiatrists are such a worthless joke..you create your patient base with crap diagnosis’ and writing scripts. Your entire practice is just a big lie! You are all predators!
Thanks for the message. This will probably piss you off, but you’re probably always pissed off, so… lady, maybe you should see a psychiatrist? I think you might have issues!
SD