The Professionalization of Drug Abuse Treatment

Abstract

This article attempts to review the role of the physician in the area of drug abuse treatment and suggests that part of the treatment should be offered to the drug addict in a medical model familiar to him — the physician's office. Physicians and citizens, alike, have responded far too long to the myths that characterize the heroin addict as a degenerate sociopath and that only paraprofessional former heroin addicts, coming out of the drug milieu, are capable of relating to or helping drug addicts in their rehabilitation. Physicians are quite capable of rendering professional care to the patient who abuses substances, but our nation's heritage of inhibitory drug abuse treatment legislation has kept the physician's hands tied in this area, and recent changes in legislation have only begun to untie that knot.