Some questions, answers from Unthank

Clallam County Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry Unthank answers questions about MAT clinics and treatment:

• Do MATs get you high?

“A MAT-dose appropriately does not,” Unthank said.

“But if you give a pile of Methadone to someone whose never had Methadone before, yes you can make them high. So don’t.”

MAT patients function just as well or better than those going cold turkey at driving, their jobs, school and more, she said.

MATs aren’t exchanging one hard drug for another, Unthank added.

“Methadone is a long acting opiate. It’s kind of slow on, slow off. Suboxone is a partial activist and can’t get high if you try. Naltrexone is just a blocker,” she said.

“These are not the equivalent of heroin.”

For MAT, Unthank said, patients don’t show up, get pills and leave. They can be treated for a number of things along with addiction and receive standard care such as pap smears, mammograms and other services.

She said physicians try to screen for mental health disorders and provide the counseling and care they might need.

who is addicted

• Who is addicted?

“There’s no particular group that gets addicted to opioids,” Unthank said.

One of the largest groups of addicts, Unthank said, is doctors because they have access to money.

“It’s not going to show,”she said. “We don’t have to steal. Until you really fall off the wagon, you can’t tell.”

• Are addicts dangerous?

Unthank said there’s no data for that.

“There are drugs that can make you more dangerous. Opiates are not one of them,” she said. “Opiates make you go to sleep. They don’t make you rage at the people in your life.”

She said her MAT patients “are some of the most rewarding to work with.”

“They are interested in improving their lives,” Unthank said.

While there isn’t a 100 percent success rate, Unthank said no treatment she does is for everyone but she finds her MAT patients do a better job of controlling than most of her other patients with chronic conditions.

• Where will patients come from?

Unthank said she doubts people will come from big cities for treatment.

“You can go down the street (in Seattle) and get treatment,” she said.

“The only people busing people is us.”

Unthank said the only busing she knows of is from Clallam County to Aberdeen, Everett and/or Tacoma daily.

“Cities are taking our patients, which luckily they’re willing to do,” she said.

If people receiving treatment do move here it’ll be likely to move with family, she said, but not in large influxes.

The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has said that the proposed MAT is for patients in Clallam and Jefferson counties who are seeking treatment voluntarily.

• The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe receives a higher reimbursement rate from Medicaid patients. What will they do with the money?

Unthank said any profits are, by law, to be reinvested back in health care.