 What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. So I wanted to talk about a new video Vice just released. It was titled something like, you know, this RV is going around like with this like, addiction saving drugs, something along those lines. I'm gonna link it down in the description below. Anyways, we're talking about a medication called Vivitrol that saves a ton of addicts' lives. All right, so I wanted to share a little bit of my experience with the medication, break down the video a little bit. I have some questions about the video as well, but anyways, before we get started, it is important to note that I am not a doctor, okay? I am just a drug addict with seven and a half years clean. I'm sharing my personal experience, as well as the experience I had running groups at a drug and alcohol rehab for a little over three years. All right, so a hundred times in this video, I'm gonna tell you that if you're interested in this medication, talk to a doctor. All right, so yeah, let's get started. Let's kind of recap this video a little bit. I will be showing screenshots rather than video clips because big corporate Vice will try to take this video down if I use their clips, all right? So anyways, this video is about a recovering drug addict, I believe his name is Stuart, and he works for this organization where they drive around in an RV throughout Pennsylvania and they administer this drug called Vivitrol to people trying to stay clean from opioids, which is drugs like heroin, prescription opioids, which was my drug of choice, possibly even fentanyl. I've heard through some of my recent research that people are addicted to fentanyl. For the most part, I've known some people who are hooked on fentanyl, but a lot of people aren't going out using fentanyl on a regular basis from my experience. You can tell me if I'm wrong about that from your experience down in the comments below. But fentanyl is way more powerful than even heroin, and that's why so many people overdose on it. So a lot of times when people are overdosing on fentanyl it's mixed with something else, it's mixed with heroin. People have been even pressing it with drugs like the prescription medication Xanax and things like that, right? So fentanyl is a very dangerous drug. So anyways, they're driving around and they're administering Vivitrol, all right? So I wanted to share a little bit of my experience real quick with the drug. So this medication, I fully believe that it saved my life. All right, this medication 1000% saved my life. So I was actually taking the pill form of this medication called Naltrexone. So the difference between the pill form and the shot is the shot lasts for about 30 days. The pill, I had to take it every single day. So from my experience, one of the reasons people use the shot is because they can just kind of set it and forget it, all right? But yeah, they just take the shot for 30 days. The pill I had to take every single day. Some people don't trust themselves to take that pill every single day. So like, basically you can just miss a dose and go get high, you know what I mean? But for me, especially in my circumstance, and I wanted to talk about Naltrexone, the pill version, because they even say it in the Vice video, like Vivitrol, that shot, like without insurance, it can be like $1400 per shot, right? So I didn't have any insurance. I had to pay out of pocket for Naltrexone. I think I was on California's Medicaid at that time and they didn't even cover that medication through Medicaid. So hopefully that changes in the future because like I said, it saved my life. The reason I was introduced to it was I was maybe, I don't know, a few weeks clean. Like after I went through withdrawal, cold turkey withdrawal, which was brutal. After I went through withdrawal, I remember sitting in my sober living house and I was just obsessing on getting high. Absolutely obsessing. And Vivitrol and Naltrexone, they are meant to reduce cravings. So sitting there in my sober living house, I was like twitching, I was freaking out. One of my old drug dealers lived like literally a block away from my sober living house and I called my mom who was the clinical director at a rehab there in town and I asked her, I said, mom, what do I do? What do I do? I'm freaking out. And she's like, you should try getting on Naltrexone. I'm like, sure. So that day, since you worked at a rehab with an addiction doctor, he was able to write me a prescription for Naltrexone. I went and I got it, boom! The cravings were gone. Like I was like, holy crap. Like the way I explained it is it felt like my brain was just in a million places obsessing over getting high. And once I took the medication, it just, and everything just calmed down. And that is why I'm such a huge advocate for this medication, all right? So when you hear about medications that help opioid addicts, typically you hear about Suboxone, okay? So in the video, they bring on a doctor who explains Vivitrol a little bit and how it works. And basically what the drug does is it binds to your opioid receptors, all right? The reason, one of the main reasons we have such strong cravings is because those opioid receptors are vacant once we stop using. So with Vivitrol, it binds to those receptors. So what's the difference between Suboxone and Vivitrol? Suboxone is mainly used to help with withdrawals, okay? Vivitrol and Naltrexone, those are to help with cravings in the long term. Now the way I always explain Vivitrol and Naltrexone is for me, it was like, it was like, remember when you're a kid and your like parents like pushing you on the bike and you're like, oh, hey, hey, hey, then they let go and you're just on your own, right? That's what the medication was like for me. Like during the six months that I was on the medication, I was actively going to 12 step meetings. I was actively working with a sponsor. I was actively working with my steps. So by the time I stopped taking that medication, like I was fine, like I was set, I was good to go. I figured out a lot of the reasons why I used and everything like that and being involved in those programs really helped. Now Suboxone, there's my personal opinion. Again, talk to a doctor about any of these medications. My personal opinion on Suboxone is you should do a short-term Suboxone taper, all right? Some people stay on Suboxone for months or years. Some people are doing great on it, so don't get me wrong. Again, this is just my personal opinion, but I do wanna share a story about one of my friends who recently relapsed because they were on long-term Suboxone maintenance because something happened at the rehab that they were going to, their outpatient program, and something happened where they weren't able to refill their Suboxone prescription. Now, unlike Vivitrol and Neltrexone, Suboxone can make you withdrawal, all right? So my friend, once they ran out of Suboxone, they were craving, they were withdrawing and they ended up relapsing on opioids, right? So from my personal experience, my personal experience, I was on Neltrexone for six months and after six months, I was just off of it. There was no tapering or anything, zero withdrawals, no withdrawals at all. So now, you might be wondering, why are more people not taking Neltrexone and Vivitrol? And I have theories about that, but one of them is doctors don't talk about it and that bums me out. Here's an example. When I was doing groups at the rehab I worked at, I did a lot of inpatient groups, but primarily probably 75% of the groups I did were outpatient and the clients in there, they would meet with a doctor, I think, once or twice a week or whatever. But anyways, when I was doing groups on detox and withdrawal and medications and everything like that because it was a dual diagnosis treatment center, so basically people came there where they had an addiction as well as a mental illness. So I talked about the importance of staying on your antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, non-narcotic ones, but then I talked to them and I would say by a show of hands, how many of you have heard about Neltrexone or Vivitrol? And I swear to you, I swear to you, in a group of 50 or 60 people, maybe one or two hands went out. And I'm thinking about doing a video about why I really disliked working for a corporate rehab, but I was regularly really upset that our doctors at that rehab were not telling our clients about these life-saving medications. Like once I was, so I would tell the entire group, ask the doctor, ask the doctor about these medications. The next thing you know, they would get on them, they'd come up to me and they'd be like, Chris, oh my God, you were right, like my cravings are pretty much gone. So one of the issues is that doctors don't talk about this. So if you are somebody trying to get clean or for the love of God, the majority of you know somebody who is an opioid addict, tell them about these medications. Because a lot of people, they relapse because of their cravings. When you don't have to worry about the cravings, you can focus on your recovery. You know what I mean? So my second theory, which is a little tinfoil hat-ish is that maybe some doctors don't talk about Vivitrol or Null Tricone because there is money to be made in long-term suboxone maintenance. You keep somebody on suboxone, they gotta keep seeing you and every time they see you, there's a copay and insurance is paying for this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, I don't know, but it's a possibility. All right, but anyways, I just wanted to say that, I do have some questions about the Vice Video, go ahead and check out the video for yourself, it's in the description. But anyways, like I said, they drive around and they administer Vivitrol. So when I first saw this video, I was like, okay, this is some kind of nonprofit, they get like government funding or they get donations or whatever and they go and they administer this drug to people who can't afford it, right? But that's actually not the case. They go to different like rehabs and they administer this drug and they bill insurance. So one of the questions I have is, why isn't the rehab facility just administering this drug? But the other question is, why can't they get government funding or do they? Because like hopefully, like they're doing amazing work, don't get me wrong, they're doing amazing work because for some reason, even though they didn't explain it, like I'm glad that they're going to facilities and giving people Vivitrol because obviously their rehab isn't doing it but I would hope in the future that at some point they get some kind of funding and they can give this to people who can't afford it because like I said, I couldn't afford that Vivitrol shot. It was 1400 bucks. Some of the clients I worked with at the rehab, their insurance company didn't cover Vivitrol or if they did, like they'd cover X amount of percentage so the client would still have to pay like $500 a month. Like that's the thing about us drug addicts. Like we don't have money. We don't have money. Like if you're a drug addict like me, like you spent all your money on drugs. So hopefully there are organizations out there working on just like getting government funding for Vivitrol and Neltrack Zone. It kind of blows my mind that more insurance companies will cover Suboxone maintenance and not cover these medications. So if you do have insurance, call them and ask, hey, do you cover this medication or next time you're talking to your doctor? I don't know and this is why you need to ask a doctor. I don't know if primary care physicians are allowed to administer Vivitrol. My Neltrack Zone was prescribed. It was prescribed by the doctor at the rehab. So there are certain doctors, okay? I believe they're called addictionologists. They specialize in addiction medicine, okay? That is extremely important. A lot of people don't know about this. There are doctors who specialize in addiction medicine. This is very important for a wide range of reasons. One of them is because they can prescribe Vivitrol and Neltrack Zone. The other one is because doctors who specialize in addiction know which medications, not to give your drug addict butt, all right? If you go to a regular doctor and you're in recovery, there is a possibility. Like I'm very fortunate to have a very good primary care doctor, but there is a possibility that you tell them that you are an addict in recovery, you can't have anything addictive and they'll still give you something addictive without you even realizing it, all right? I'm very grateful for my doctor. She knows I'm an addict in recovery. I've had her for maybe four or five years now since my last doctor retired and she is just, I wish everybody can have her as a doctor. Like every addict around the world, I wish they could have her as a doctor, all right? So moral of this story, talk to your doctor about Neltrack Zone and Vivitrol, okay? And for the love of God, like share this video or just tell your friends about this, like this medication saves lives and not enough people know about it. I don't like all of the content that Vice puts out, but I am so grateful that they raise some awareness about Vivitrol and hopefully my video does the same because if more addicts knew about this drug, I think relapse rates would drop significantly. And that's one of the issues is that relapse rates are extremely high for drug addicts. So if there is a medication out there that reduces cravings, get your butt on them, all right? But let me ask you this too before I let you go down in the comments. If you have experience with Vivitrol or Neltrack Zone, let me know down in the comments below. My experience, I think maybe only less than 5% of the people I've met have had some kind of side effects from it, but yeah, share your experience down in the comments below because it helps people know that I'm not just talking out of my butt or maybe some other people out there have been helped by this medication. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And I wanna send out a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon. As well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at the rewiretole.com and everybody who, boom, gets the merch from the merch store. Look at that, pretty cool, huh? All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.