Until you walk a day in my shoes. Can healthcare providers really help?

Until you walk a day in my shoes. Can healthcare providers really help someone with drug or alcohol addiction?
You go to the doctor for an ache or pain. Stomach problems and your throat hurts. Can healthcare help people with drug and alcohol addiction by giving them more drugs or even more alcohol? Do drugs really help you get off of drugs or is it just another addiction?
They offer expensive help from a doctor, nurse, or counselor right. If they have not ever had addiction or a problem with alcohol how can they truly help? They must know what they are doing right? They went to medical school. Are you hurt or full of disease? Lol no you have an addiction.
I'm not sure that there is comfort or relief from addiction in more drugs. Trading one for another. I don't know. I figure the only way to really be capable of helping someone is to have walked in their shoes.

I think they can be able to help you medically, but when it comes to the emotional part of really helping you in terms of relating then I don't think so. I think a mentor like the one in Alcoholics Anonymous would be the right one for the job when it comes to relating and emotional connections.

I always say that there's people in every profession that will go the extra mile and those who won't. I've been to wonderful healthcare providers who really have tried to get to the bottom of things more than passing you off at a surface level. But then I've also been to others who seem to put you in the too hard basket and don't really care. I think a lot of the time they just don't have the expertize when it comes to dealing with addiction and the issues that come with it.

I think that they can help but only to a certain extent. Everybody is different and as their own issues and problems so they can only do so much to try and help and support you.

If you don't at least try and help yourself then I think there's only a certain amount they can do.

They can totally help a struggling addict only if that person is willing and determined. You can never help someone if he/she doesn't even want to change for the better.

Health care providers can and certainly do help. There are some addictions which you can be very hard to beat because quitting cold turkey for them isn't an option. Such people will need a health care provider to help them.

But of course whether or not the help such an addict gets works depends entirely on their willingness to battle and overcome the addiction.

A trained, licensed physician does not have to have been a drug addict to help a person get off of drugs by prescribing- based on their experience with other similar cases in the past- what they think is best.
But Doctors are human, so there are some good ones out there, and there are some bad ones out there. If you find the prescribed treatment is not working for you, then that is your cue to go and look elsewhere for help. It can be hard to find the right help, but it can be found.
Depending on who it is, that doctor might not be the one to sympathize with your addiction, you might want to go to counseling for that, or into a drug program. Whatever, and whomever resonates with you.

I think I get what you're saying. I do believe that there are medications that can help to reduce the urges or the thirst for drugs; However, addiction recovery goes deeper than that. Psychological, emotional and mental help is needed. An individual goes into drug addiction with their mind and emotion, therefore these faculties have to be tackled and adjust it.

Precisely. You don't need to be an ex rapist to help a rapist. Neither do you need to be a former thief to help a thief. Doctors are trained to do their jobs in helping addicts and they will go about it prescribing whatsoever medication is also necessary. It is up to the patient if they want to change though.

I believe they can help because the last thing you need is advice coming from ignorance. This is your life. While you are trusting that your health care provider has the training needed to help you, you need to be just as involved. Maybe you need a second opinion, maybe you need alternative solutions. Though you won't know those things until you start looking at what is and is not working for you as an individual.

Well... I'm not sure I'm getting what you are saying here OP. Are you confusing normal meds with meds that can actually cause an addiction? Because those two are so different, I should know. The meds I take right now help me control me glucose levels in blood, I need them, but I am not addicted to them. That being said, I feel doctors, even specialist screw up really badly very often. My neurosurgeon prescribed me ''Propanolol'', I gained a lot weight on it and it might not even be helpful in cases like mine... then he had the nerve to say I am now fat... Some doctors screw things up so badly, they are humans... medical or no medical school, we all make mistakes. That is why I google the new medications I get prescribed... wish I had done the same with propanolol.

Interesting replies. Incompetence and lack of empathy is sometimes an issue. "You don't have to be an ex rapist to help a rapist" Lol, rapists don't usually seek help it is usually a victim. Lol I mean do you think that a rapist will go to a shrink and say help me stop doing this please. Right I'm sure that happens, not. Lol "A former thief to help a thief" Yeah like they go for help to. Lin B I don't think these are the same.
Drug addict is way different than a rapist or thief. What are they going to do walk into a shrinks office and say I'd like an appointment. Sit down and say I've got a serious problem. I just keep raping people. They don't have clinics for that, maybe prison.
I guess one would relate to the analogy that way if they could relate to it. It's kind of like if you had been on the floor at one point in your life snorting up lines. You figured it out and got yourself out. You know how to do it. Does a doctor know how to do that? They know what drugs to give, or at least the ones they think. He hasn't been there. I guess they might make someone feel safe maybe or taken care of. Perhaps they didn't get any attention from family.
I'm going to be cracking up about the rapist thing for days. I mean really? The only time these people get any kind of help is in jail and it is forced JUST like what they did to another human being. FORCED SEX. You kidding me a freak like that would go to a shrink and try to get into their pants. They would dream up another problem and use it as an excuse to get close to another victim.
This poses a whole other question; Can a sane or supposed sane shrink help a rapist? First there's judgment, then there's method. If you judge someone it makes it three times as difficult to have an unbiased opinion of method. How to speak to them. I guess it's like how can an empathetic person help a narcissist. They can't. You would need to be a person without a conscious and inability to put yourself in another person's shoes. Both cannot conceive the other's point of view. One doesn't know the difference between right and wrong....AND doesn't care. The other goes out of their way to care and always considers right and wrong.
Well there is a big difference between drug addicts, thieves, rapists, and narcissists. The medical industry makes drug addicts with prescription drugs aside from those seeking help with drug addiction. Why would you go to the ones who make drug addicts to get help with drug addiction. Isn't that like the rape victim going to the rapist for help?

I kind of agree with you, I think that it's really unprofessional to reemplace addictions, but sadly a lot of people is doing it. On the other hand, I think that to help someone you don't really need to be or have been on their situation before, it's true that if you haven't walked on their shoes you will never fully understand them...but for example, there's a lot of excellent psychologists out there and they don't need to have had all of those psychological disorders to help people, but they do. Empathy is the key word here.

I think that's true, unless they have proven methods that work. Someone who has been a addict would know how to break an addiction if they've done it themselves. If health care professionals use proven methods that will lead to recovery that may help also. It seems like what your saying is it would be better to deal with someone you can relate to. Dealing with someone you can relate to is always more comfortable.

I would say that actually the medical industry is trying to make the whole world become addict to medication, not just people seeking to quit an actual addiction or lessen withdrawal side effects.

Nowadays the pharmaceutical industry bombing you with advertising day and night saying you need this over-the-counter medication or that other to relieve stress, to cure gastritis, to avoid intestinal bloating, and so on.

If you pay careful attention, it seems like there is no chance to have a single individual on planet earth that should not take all that medication they are wanting us to buy, and this is truly insane.

I don't know too many health care professionals that would recommend more alcohol let alone give someone alcohol or prescribe it (don't think you can, can you?) and in all honesty, health care professionals as in say a doctor, are the last place I would turn for help with alcohol except to monitor the damage I had done to my liver, The best a doctor can do is give you tranquilizers and a good doctor won't do that, they will send you to a detox where, yes, you will likely be given tranquilizers but only in the short term. They are given for relief of withdrawal symptoms, not to create a new addiction and if a person chooses to abuse them after detox, it is unlikely that its going to be because a doctor is prescribing them. Any doctor who does is unethical in my opinion. As for narcotic substance abuse, the only time I have heard of a health care professional giving drugs to replace drugs, is in the case of methadone for heroin, I can't say that I agree with the use of methadone in treating heroin addiction. If you are going to do that, you might as well leave the person on heroin as my experience with people on methadone is that they consistently use other drugs because they are not experiencing the high from it. (Not all people on methadone do this so don't think that I mean that they do, some however, do abuse other drugs.) But that is a government choice, not a health care professional's . Only the government can decide to allow heroin addicts to obtain legal heroin like they do in England, Now then, it is my opinion that the person chooses to replace one drug for another, not usually the health care professional who puts them in that position, Often people will see a doctor and purposely mislead them in order to get another drug, but I don't think that this is the doctor's fault. As for other health care professionals, many of them can be very helpful like the workers in outreach clinics. A lot of them have walked a mile or more in our shoes and that is why they became what they did.

They do actually give an alcoholic in rehab alcohol. Usually if they have very bad withdrawal it is actually given. It is even spoken about in this forum.
I understand your point of view for not wanting to go to doctors for help with alcohol. You are also reinforcing how drugs to get off drugs make no sense.
You don't think it is the doctor's fault the patient misleads the doctor to get another drug. This is a very interesting statement. What a subject. Wow. This really clarifies the fact that a doctor doesn't know anything about drug abuse or at least the kind you are talking about. It is classic for a drug addict to manipulate to get more or another. See this is the whole problem. A doctor should know that a drug addict will behave that way but they don't. You know why? Because they aren't their wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, friend or whatever and this, this is how you really get to know the ins and outs. It is the same thing as mental problems. The addict or mentally disturbed is not going to be completely honest. They are not going to reveal things the way they reveal with those who are close to them. It is just a joke.
Outreach, ok that sounds like what I am thinking is a better way. Takes the judgement and lack of experience out of it.

Healthcare providers are trained personnel. They have helped thousands and will continue to be able to help others. They can help that extent to which they have been trained however, you may also need psychological counseling.

Healthcare providers are trained personnel? Are they? I think its questionable. Competence seems to often be in shortage. I don't think you can train people in that Lol. Psychological counseling can only go so far. The percentage of success rate is pretty low so if people keep relapsing I'm not sure what they are trained in. Although there are certain programs that are 100% effective that are not related to so called Healthcare.

Yes, but you have to be willing to accept their help!