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Common MAT Misconceptions Debunked

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Common MAT Misconceptions Debunked Medically Assisted Treatment refers to certain opioid medications that are widely used to treat addiction and dependence on prescription and illicit opioids. Suboxone, also known as Buprenorphine, has become the industry standard for MAT in the United States. Addiction is a life-long ailment for which there is no cure. Existing treatments and intervention methods show high rates of failure and a grim prognosis. For example, the success rate of intensive inpatient rehab in the United States is said to be 5%. Meanwhile, once a patient reaches their 12 th month on MAT, the success rate is 60%. The numbers do not lie. When MAT is utilized, it works better than any other addiction treatment. It is an asset in curbing the opioid epidemic. If the true concern is fighting the opioid epidemic and decreasing opioid related fatalities, MAT should be revered as the best thing since sliced bread. But it is not.   Unfortunately, the use of MAT is heavily...
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It's Not A "Free Trial" When They Need My Card Information And Deny Said Card For Not Having Enough Cash On It.

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  First of all, needing credit card information for a "free trial" is completely snake-ish, sneaky, and capitalizing on consumers forgetting to cancel their cards, hence paying for something they don't want to pay for. It's a jerk thing to do. But these companies take it a step further. You can have $7.00 on your card and your card gets "denied" Uhhh but it's a 30-90 day trial? Who's to say that I don't plan on adding funds to the card in the next 30-90 days? The initial transaction is ZERO. So why the fuck is it of any concern how much cash I have? Which brings me to another topic: There have been times in my life where I had just $7.00 in my bank account and I swear to God, it bothered other people more than it bothered me. I went to the bank once and the second the teller pulled up my account and saw the amount, she acted like she saw a ghost and said "O.O Uh sir...do you realize you have s-" Me: Yeah, seven dollars in my bank accoun...
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The Never Ending Dope Run

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  It’s 11AM and I'm dopesick. I pick up homegirl who’s about a 15 minute drive from my place. I arrive call her, let her know I'm outside. It takes her 20 minutes to come outside and get in the car. I've already got 35 minutes invested into this dope run and it’s barely just started. I strap in and prepare for a long ride. I ask her where we’re going so I can enter it into my GPS. She tells me to hold on, gets out her phone, and makes a call. Being naïve about what she’s doing or who she’s calling, I assume she’s calling her connect so see where the meetup spot is. No worries. It’s always good to plan this stuff, right? But that’s not what she’s doing... She’s actually calling around to see  where  we can get something. She doesn’t even  know  where we’re getting it from. I thought she had this lined up. Her plugs don’t answer. So we sit there while she makes calls and texts people. Decades of addiction have resulted in the decline of her mental faculties; It ta...
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When Your Landlord Is Also Your Roommate, A Scumbag, And A Hot Couch Guy

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For a short period of time I had a Hot Couch Guy not only as my Landlord but my roommate too. The result? A horrendously infuriating experience, and a ton of material for some entertaining stories. Here is my experience: First off, I have a permanent residence in Tennessee, and have been in Texas for the last couple of months on a temporary basis. That being said, when I came here I needed an arrangement for more than one month but less than one year. So like many other Americans, I went on the Craigslist and I found myself a room to rent. "What could possibly go wrong?" I figured.  Ahem. Quite a bit apparently. It was me, one other tenant, and the landlord. I made the decision to move there quite hastily, as there were time restraints and I needed something to pan out quickly. The layout of the house is a kitchen/living room combination in one small open space, the landlord's master bedroom and then the two other bedrooms to the left of it. That's the whole house, i...
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Thanatophobia: My Struggles with Death and Acceptance

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The fear of death is inhabited me for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are riddled with fear of my own mortality. My younger experiences with it consisted of week-long spurts of terror that the afterlife was not real and that when you die you go absolutely nowhere. I would cry and look for affirmation from my mother that this was not true, and I remember her reassurances were extremely unconvincing and I continued to live in that fear.  I was merely six years old when these conversations took place; I am now 27. I would live in that fear, sometimes in sheer terror, crippling anxiety, literally afraid to move at some points and that was how bad it got. Living in constant awareness of my inevitable mortality, so scared that my heart felt as though it was beating out of my chest. So scared that many times I felt as though my fear would send me into a cardiac arrest that would lead to my death, further exacerbating my fear. This would go on for any ti...
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