Amber Hollingsworth (host of the "Put the Shovel Down" YouTube channel) explains medication-assisted treatment (MAT), primarily in the context of opioid use disorder. She defines MAT broadly but emphasizes opioid-replacement medications—methadone and especially buprenorphine (used in Suboxone, Subutex, Sublocade)—noting they stabilize chemical dependency and reduce overdose risk, but do not cure the psychological/behavioral aspects of addiction. The video outlines pros and cons and urges viewers to consider MAT as one tool among others and to watch a related video on whether addiction is a choice or disease.
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Medication assisted treatment, definitely a hot topic out there. And this video is especially for people who have a loved one struggling with addiction. I want you to understand what medication assisted treatment is and how it works so you can make decisions on whether or not you want to support your loved one going down this pathway. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, and you're watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel dedicated exclusively to help helping you understand the psychology of addiction so you can recover yourself or your loved one and get your life back on track. If that's something that you want to do, consider subscribing, and I'll make sure that you have all the tools, resources, and supports to make that happen. Okay? So in a general sense, medication assisted treatment is a really broad term that can mean a lot of things. I mean, you can use the term medication assisted treatment to mean someone that's trying to recover from drug and alcohol problem, but they're also taking an antidepressant. Now, in the strictest form of what medication assisted treatment means, it includes those things. It's use of any medication to assist the recovery process. But when most people say medication assisted treatment, what they're really referring specifically to is medications used in the treatment of opioid use disorder. Because these days, there are several medications out there that people are using to treat opioid use disorder specifically. These are different forms of opiates that are given to people struggling with opiate addiction to help stabilize their condition. Essentially, that's all fancy talk. That means you give someone that's addicted to an opiate, like a pain pill or heroin, another form of opiate, and you may be thinking to yourself, why in the world would you do that? Well, there are several reasons. When someone uses opiates or pain pills long enough, they develop chemical dependency. And that is the thing that keeps them trapped. That means they have to use other or they get really, really sick because their brain and body have adjusted so much to the substance that they're using. And that is one of the biggest obstacles for people early on in the recovery process. It's, I can't stop using because I will get really, really sick. Which brings people down into a really primal, desperate state. And they do all kinds of desperate things to avoid that sickness, like stealing, like lying, like robbery, like putting themselves bad, all kinds of situations. So being able to stabilize that is extremely important and helpful. Now, the first opioid replacement that came on the scene was methadone. And methadone is still being used Today. But for the most part, what I see mostly is the use of buprenorphine. Now, buprenorphine is the active opiate used in Suboxone, Subutex, and Supplicate. Now, I've got other videos that will explain to you exactly what those are and what the differences are and exactly what buprenorphine is. But for this video, I just want you to understand that it is an opiate itself that's given to people to help replace an opiate that they're addicted to. And in the case of buprenorphine, it's an opiate that attaches to the opiate receptors in a brain in such a way that makes it safer. All that boils down to is that there's a much less risk of overdose when someone is using buprenorphine, as opposed to the other opiates that people tend to get addicted to, like pain pills or heroin. So buprenorphine can go a long way to stabilize chemical dependency. But here's the thing. Addiction is so much more than chemical dependency. Addiction is about a thought disorder. It's an obsession, it's a compulsion. And even when you can stabilize the chemical dependency part for someone, that obsession and that compulsion still remains. Which is why so many people who do well on things like buprenorphine continue to go out and do all kinds of other addictive things, like abuse other substances, like stop taking their medicine and go back to taking heroin or pain pills. So if you have a loved one that's addicted to opioids, what I want you to know about it is it can help stabilize them, it can help reduce the risk of overdose. But the cons of using this medicine is, is it doesn't make them less chemically dependent. In fact, a lot of people have a very, very, very hard time coming off of buprenorphine and or methadone. And I've been told countless times that it's harder to come off of than the reg pills or heroin. So essentially, what I want you to know about it is it can stabilize the situation, but it does not fix addiction. It can help with things like getting people back to functional, helping them to be able to not be doing all those desperate things that they were doing before to obtain the substance. So, like with almost everything else, there are pros and cons to doing this. But the biggest thing I want you to understand about it is that it does not fix addiction. And to understand what I mean by that a little more thoroughly, I want you to watch my video on is addiction a choice or a disease, I'm going to link it right up here for you. And after that, you're going to have an even better understanding of exactly what I'm trying to tell you.
