Registration

People who try to post have noticed that I now ask for registration in order to post.  I hate to do this, but the world of Suboxone treatment is pretty crazy… and I want to have some measure of control over the information that comes through my blog.  I want to clarify my thoughts on the issue though– because people control what is posted for many reasons, including what I consider the wrong reasons– as I’ll get into…

I subscribe to Google alerts for Suboxone, buprenorphine, addiction, etc… plus I receive e-mails from many other addiction-related sites.  I get all these messages because I really should know   what is going on in the Suboxone world if I am going to call myself ‘SuboxDoc’.  Sometimes I will read a plea for help from a different site– perhaps Sober Recovery, or Drugs.com, or even ‘Sub Sux’ (yes, there is such a site).

In response I see tons of wrong answers– clearly wrong answers–  and I want to help!  Understand that opiate addiction is a fatal illness, as fatal as any cancer… so wrong answers are… not good!  But if I post something I know to be true, based on years of being a physician, my PhD work, my work as a med school professor of addiction topics or as a trained ‘treatment advocate, or my 16 years of personal dealings with my own addiction…  my answer will just be another guess in the garbage pile of guesses and opinions. (note to self– addicts like myself all want to think we are special;  I have to watch myself when I start presenting myself as an expert on any topic.  I have stopped sharing my ‘expertise’ on many topics– political ones in particular– as I came to realize that there are no ‘right’ answers to many issues.  There are many things I’m NOT good at–  I’m not much of an athlete, for example.  But addiction has become, unfortunately, something I am becoming expert at.  Why couldn’t I be an expert at something like injecting collagen into the lips of beautiful rich people?).

When I know a way to help, I want to post my real credentials… and my blog name.  Most sites around the internet allow posts to include a signature that has the nickname and the person’s blog or home site– check it out and you will see that.  But the places I mentioned above don’t allow that–I assume because they worry about people finding better sources of information and drifting away. But what kind of system is that?  People aren’t idiots– they will find the other sites eventually… but some people need the right information NOW!  But Drugs.com, sober recovery, and a couple others don’t allow any reference to my own blog, no even just the title in my signature– they call it ‘spamming’, even if I am posting good information and trying to help someone.  I am annoyed by the ‘spamming’ accusation– coming from sites that are paid large sums of money from drug companies and other sources.  It irritates me– does it show?

So I don’t post my blog name.  Of course, you all are still welcome to refer people my way– the sites take issue with my ‘self-promotion’, but they generally do allow people to tell other people about web sites and sources of information.  I want more readers, primarily because it motivates me to write when I feel like many people are reading what I write.  Yes, I would also like to make money off the blog, as I have mentioned many times!  But so far, that is not working.  You will notice that I have changed the appearance several times, including just yesterday…  the dark theme with ads up and down the sides wasn’t ‘doing it’.  Can you believe that despite averaging 200 hits per day, I haven’t gotten a dime in revenue from the ads? (actually I did make 8 bucks one day… from my own order for domains from godaddy.com!) The Google Adwords bring in about 25 cents per day on average, … so don’t think that if you refer to me, I’ll be raking it in!   As I have said many times, I am very grateful for donations of ANY size, even just a couple bucks… but donations are quite rare at least in my experience.

So please don’t confuse my asking for registration with those practices.  If you want to put your blog’s name in your post, go ahead.  If you really want to make me happy, put a link to me on YOUR blog… and if there is interest I will put up an area on the blog for readers’ blogs, and put your link up as well.
So why do I have people register in order to post?  Two main reasons.  The first is because I do occasionally put my name out there on sites where my position is unpopular, and I don’t want people who have no interest other than destroying me to have free access to post on my blog.  If a person writes a comment that I don’t agree with but that doesn’t insult me and my family (!), I will let it through– although I may take issue with the parts I disagree with.  I don’t put up the daily messages that wrongly say that ‘suboxone is the worst thing in the world to withdraw from’, or that wrongly say that ‘suboxone is doing brain damage’, or that wrongly state that ‘people on Suboxone aren’t ‘recovering’ because they are still taking a drug’, or finally that make the incorrect ‘substituting one drug for another’ argument.  I have addressed each of these issues in multiple posts, so I won’t go into them now– but I likely will again at some point.  I don’t put them up simply because that is incorrect information that already has too great a presence on the web.  The third example I listed has an opinion component, but the others are simply wrong, based on scientific fact.  And throwing out that kind of garbage isn’t what I want this blog to do.

The second reason for registration is because if you share an e-mail address with me (and you can simply make up any address through hotmail, yahoo, or wherever) I have a way to get in touch with people who have interest in the area of opiate dependence.  I would never sell e-mail addresses– do people even buy them?  And have no plans to use them.  But if I find out that there is a great study that is looking for patients on Suboxone,  or if I ever have a huge celebration for people on Suboxone, I could use the addresses to send out an announcement!

In any case, thank you for your understanding.  I hope that asking for registration won’t keep you from participating with the blog.