Let me elaborate my treatment plans a little. When I was going to the methadone clinic, as part of my treatment I had to see a counselor once a week for an hour. Warren, it was a man about your age whom I enjoyed speaking with. As generally happens when I find a "professional" that I like, we ended up just having friendly chats instead of working on any of my personal issues. The 2nd time I started going to the methadone clinic I made the "mistake" of revealing everything that I was thinking about. I already knew to never mention anything concerning self harm so I never do. However, apparently what I said concerned him enough to tell the clinic director and ultimately the clinic owner. They requested I have a psychological evaluation performed by a MD. I refused and as a result they revoked my take-home privileges and gave me a deadline by which time I must have had the evaluation performed. So, I quit going.
The day I had shared my deeper feelings on certain subjects, my counselor recommended a friend of his who's a psych MD trained to deal with addiction.
I remembered this guy yesterday and called him and was surprised to learn that he is licensed to prescribe buprenorphine. I got his voice email and left him a message but didn't hear from him. Just listening to his voice though, I got a good feeling about him. Now, I'm kind of letting fade decide this. If I can get a hold of him and he's accepting new patients, I shall go that route. If he is not excepting new patients however, I'll wait to see how I feel on Thursday before going to this other doctor that I'm not too crazy about. For a doctor to become licensed to prescribe buprenorphine for addiction they only have to take an eight hour course. They don't actually have to know anything about addiction or the psychology surrounding it. As was the case with the first burpenorphine I saw. She was an osteopathic doctor that knew only what that eight hour course taught her about addiction which from my personal experience was virtually nil.
What ever problems that I'm having searching for a HP, for me, is separate from my road to recovery......