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Editor's note: This is the second of two parts.
In the movie, "The Body Brokers," clients are paid or brokered into treatment primarily for drugs like Fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, crystal meth. Fraudulent doctors then insert "chemical implants" into their arms to block cravings. Clients are paid between $3,000 to $5,000 to have these implants.
A doctor can do 15 to 20 of these implants to the tune of $60,000 each in one day. Do the math. If he does 20 a day, that can be $1.2 million weekly that insurance companies are billed for kidney transplants, heart valves, hip replacements, to cover what's really going on. Unfortunately, because the medical industry is broken, they (insurance companies) pay these claims. The kicker is the clients that have had transplants have them removed, get paid and start using again. Then, if they broker people, they get paid again. Obviously, abstinence is out the window.
How and where these fraudulent programs exist in this country in 2022 are difficult to detect due to invisible cover-ups. When a treatment center spends $800,000 to $1,000,000 to renovate a building, they are not just doing it for treatment, but profit also. If it's legitimate, they are entitled to make a profit, if not, they should be exposed.
Thus in 2022, to keep clients in treatment, harm reduction, client-driven treatment and controlled drinking have replaced abstinence. The Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse have lost their minds and sanction harm reduction as well as "shooting galleries" where people can get high and be narcanned on taxpayers' money.
Today good is turned into bad, and bad is good. If you don't believe me, talk to your local police officer and ask him about the "cashless bail" that he or she, as an officer, has to endure in 2022. In REBT we always use facts to support rational beliefs, or to dispute irrational beliefs.
The belief that treating chemical dependency with mental health treatment first and using harm reduction instead of abstinence, killed 67,000 Americans in overdose deaths in 2018. Treatment centers blame COVID for the rise in deaths.
However, the COVID outbreak in this country didn't start until 2019. Do the math! The problem since 1999 is that a perfectly legitimate treatment like AA has now been completely ignored due to the "New Age of Treatment." A kind grandmother called me and stated, "Mr. Tramuta, what's harm reduction?" In simple terms, if your drug of choice is cocaine and you are having cravings, counselors will tell you to not use your drug of choice, cocaine, but use a lesser drug like marijuana. With this theory, clients are never sober, the pharmacology of addiction is violated, and clients can stay in treatment, keep relapsing and take no responsibility for the consequences of their addiction.
I also mentioned "client-driven treatment." Today, the power appears to rest with the clients. In my day, it rested with the client and counselor together, with the counselor in charge. Clients do not know what they need, only what they want. If a counselor today says, "I want you to go to group therapy," and the client says, "I don't like groups," the counselor will say, "OK, you don't have to go." If the counselor persists in trying to convince he or she to go to group, they can be charged with harassment, suspended and may lose their license. People are relapsing all over the place, losing their SSI and then returning to treatment three, four or five times without any accountability. It isn't any wonder to me that younger counselors adapt, go with the program and keep people in treatment sick. When I went for a counseling job, the director was a young girl about 25 to 30. The question she asked me was "how are your notes?" Being an "old school" counselor, I simply stated, "my notes are good, but they don't include harm reduction." Needless to say, I never heard from her again. Harm reduction "specialists" have no long-range studies that their philosophy will work. That is why every time I challenge them, they simply ignore my commitment to abstinence and hope I go away. At 80, I'm not going anywhere, except where God wants me to go. When Martin Luther tacked up his 95 theses because of the abuse in the church at that time, he didn't go away either.
This summer, I will provide testimonials from people who committed to AA or NA with abstinence and spirituality and turned their lives around mentally, physically and spiritually. These people had a program. Harm reduction has no such program, and I challenge them to produce one.
Mike Tramuta has been a CASAC counselor for more than 30 years. Call 983-1592 for more information.