Drug Addiction and Organ Transplantation
It’s common knowledge that addiction can tear up your body, especially your kidneys and liver for prescription painkillers and alcohol and your lungs, gums and mouth if you smoke, not to mention the not so healthy decisions you make while under the influence that put the rest of your body in harm’s way. So it should make sense that a number of drug addicts and alcoholics end up needing an organ transplant of some kind. A big area of concern is that transplant patients with a history of addiction will relapse after the surgery and in effect, “waste” the organ by destroying it with drugs and alcohol. But according to a study published in the Liver Transplantation journal and online, only about 6 percent of former alcoholics and 4 percent of drug addicts relapse in a given year after their transplant.
It’s sad that substance abuse and addiction so commonly causes organ disease and damage to a degree that a transplant is necessary. The authors of the study say that, “Future research should focus on improving the prediction of risk for substance abuse relapse, and on testing interventions to promote continued abstinence post-transplant.”
I commend the medical community for taking notice of the situation and not writing off those who are afflicted with addiction by denying them transplants. The fact that relapse after transplant has such a low occurrence is encouraging, but all that says to me is that people really needed to hit rock bottom before they could get better. The threat of transplant should be more than enough, as far as I’m concerned. If you’d rather not wait until you need a liver transplant to detox off of debilitating opiate pain medications, then you can detox using Suboxone through Meditox.
The question is, what is a big enough risk or threat that will make you stop using? Losing your job, your wife/husband/significant other, your child? Overdose? Multiple overdoses? Becoming homeless? What defines “rock bottom” for you?
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