The Coleman Institute Blog

When I started working at the Coleman Institute for Addiction Medicine many years ago, I was blown away by the parents who were shell-shocked to learn that their children—their high achieving, athletic, award-winning, popular, beloved children—were addicted to heroin.

I wrote about Ken in an earlier blog titled "Restoring Energy After Opioid Withdrawal." At that time, Ken was 5 weeks out from completing an Accelerated Opiate Detox off high doses of opioids, including hydromorphone and fentanyl. His energy was beginning to return, but it was still a struggle.

Typical scenario at the Coleman Institute:

A patient and their support person arrive at the office to begin an accelerated opioid detox from heroin, fentanyl, Dilaudid^®, Percocet^®, Vicodin^®, etc. Many patients also seek our help to come off long-acting MAT (Medication-Assisted Treatment) methadone or buprenorphine products.

Here at the Coleman Institute, we know that drug addiction is a disease. It's not your fault, but it's devastating and it affects an awful lot of people. Since 2002, we've helped over 8,500 people successfully detox off of drugs or opioids and we’re here to help. What I'd like to do is explain to you exactly how we do our accelerated opioid detox. Because I find that when family members and patients really understand what we're doing, it helps them move through the process because it makes sense to them.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided to publish "Practice and Guidelines for the Administration of Buprenorphine for Treating Opioid Use Disorder" to expand access to medication-assisted treatments (MAT) by exempting physicians from certain requirements needed to prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment.

Since 2020, more than 83,000 drug overdoses have occurred in the United States, the highest number ever recorded in a 12-month period according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The increase in overdose fatalities only signifies the need for treatment services to be more accessible for people at risk and this action will expand access to availability of treatments (such as buprenorphine) for opioid use disorder treatment