It's similar to Mr. Oliver's question about what you would present to the provincial-federal governments on how you treat the disease of addiction. As physicians, we're evidence-based, so what we're saying is that we have to utilize resources or processes that help people. As a doctor of 30 years, I'm trained to help people. I'm trained to treat treatable illnesses.
Let's say you have a palliative care patient and they're going to die. My father died in a palliative care unit, so I know what that's like. He wasn't coming back, so yes, he had lots of opiates. That was fine, because he had bone pain and he was going to die. But when you have a 26-year-old who two years ago was on the McGill soccer team and now is homeless and injecting heroin and smoking crack, and two years ago lived in Westmount, that's a different story. This is a person we can help.
How do you help them? You have to deal with it from a medical detox point of view, depending on whether it's alcohol, benzodiazepines, opiates, or amphetamines; it doesn't really matter. You have to develop a comprehensive plan to say we're going to deal with each of these issues, and you have to do that properly. Unfortunately, you can't do that in 10 minutes. It requires hospitalization, often, to be able to take the time to investigate it, to understand the biopsychosocial element of this woman to treat her withdrawal properly.
For us in the opiate world, Suboxone and methadone have been godsends. Think about it; if you're stealing up to $1,000 a day to get your fentanyl patch, think about the crime. You're 26 years old, and you have to get $800 today. It's eight o'clock in the morning, and you're in horrible withdrawal. The withdrawal of opiates is like the Norwalk virus and a panic attack at the same time. It's just horrible. They'll do anything. So we have to deal with that withdrawal, and Suboxone and methadone work very well for that.
It's not the treatment; it's the transitioning away from that horrible existence that you've developed of acquiring pharmaceuticals or heroin to a place where you're now stable enough to deal with your life. And then, that's the next part of it. If you go into an actual treatment centre, whether it's Bellwood, Homewood, or any of these places, then they start dealing with life. It is the thinking process that's the problem. We get focused on the behaviour, i.e., using the drug. They're using that to deal with all their problems. They like to use that because it makes them feel normal. The problem is that the consequences of using are the issue. What we need to do, then, is look at the person's physical problems, the person's emotional problems, the person's psychological problems, career, money, family, and all that stuff.
Again, for 25 years I sent professionals, physicians, and lots of politicians to treatment in the U.S. They stayed down there for three months, and when they came back, they were really in an excellent position and maintained sobriety. If I could try to help you guys understand what a comprehensive treatment program looks like, then you could explain that to the rest of the world.