A Lewiston doctor is prescribing Buprenorphine to addicts.
By Daniel Hartill
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Buprenorphine is a kind of anti-drug drug.

Though it is a relative of heroin, its high is about the same as several Motrin. If you try crumbling it and shooting it into a vein, it makes you sober. If you try to combine it with other drugs, they have no effect.

It may be what the people fighting addictions to heroine, cocaine, OxyContin and other pain killers have been dreaming of: an alternative to methadone that’s cheaper, safer and less impairing.

“If it works, it will become the standard for fighting opiate addiction,” said Dr. Michael Kelley, a psychiatrist at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center who began prescribing the drug less than three weeks ago.

It’s too early to know if the drug will be the success he’s hoping for, but Kelley is already pleased.

The addicts he helps are already staying in treatment longer than before, when all he could do was treat the symptoms of their withdrawal: muscle aches, nausea and depression.

“We would try to treat each symptom,” Kelley said. “It was never treated well.”

The alternative to that kind of treatment has been the use of methadone, which satiates the craving with its own powerful high.

St. Mary’s has never prescribed the drug, which is carefully monitored by the federal government. The closest methadone clinic is located in Portland.

For some people, that drug is all that keeps their lives together, said Kelley. But his preference is abstinence. His work directs people to drug-free lives.

Such lives can be foreign to addicts, whose days are controlled by the drive to find and consume more drugs.

Now, Kelley may relieve some of the withdrawal problems and begin teaching the people how to rebuild their lives. That was the hope of the federal Food and Drug Administration, which approved Buprenorphine earlier this year for treatment of opiate dependence.

Kelley has been reading about the drug for years.

Like methadone, Buprenorphine feeds an addict’s need for an opiate, taking away the cravings and other withdrawal symptoms. But unlike someone on methadone, this drug does not impair the taker. After weeks or months, doctors hope to wean addicts off all drugs.

In Europe, Buprenorphine is already the standard.

It is coming here just in time, the doctor said.

Five years ago, when Kelley began working with Lewiston addicts, only about 5 percent of his patients were addicted to opiates, the drug family that includes heroin and about 95 percent of prescription pain killers. Those include codeine, Percoset and OxyContin.

Today, such drugs account for about 40 percent of the people Kelley works with. In the 17-bed chemical dependency unit at St. Mary’s, five or six are typically opiate addicts.

Much of that comes from the rise of OxyContin.

Though the drug made more headlines in Maine a year ago, it hasn’t weakened its hold on the state or the local area, Kelley said.

Buprenorphine, used under the names Subutex or Suboxene, will require watching by Maine doctors. At Mercy Hospital in Portland, doctors began prescribing the drugs in September. Physicians in both cities are sharing some of their experiences.

For now, they are prescribing people to short-term, 30-day treatments. By next year, the federal government is likely to loosen its guidelines, making it easier to prescribe the drug for longer periods. Success for kicking the drugs could be even better, Kelley said.

“I have a huge amount of hope,” he said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com

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