Purpose of using Naltrexone Implants

As we have already mentioned, there are two ways of looking at NTX implants:

Naltrexone Implant as a stand-alone treatment (cure)
Naltrexone Implant as a part of the therapy.

Any serious doctor will tell you that Naltrexone implant is not a cure and not a treatment by itself. They will tell you that NTX implant only serves those patients who want to remain 'clean' or have a desire to be "clean", ie. to continue therapy without the use of any medication on opiate basis.

The purpose of using NTX implants cannot be explained in one sentence, but the essence would be as follows:

primarily - to protect patients during psychotherapy (from itself, others and other influences)
secondly – to serve as immeasurable HELP to BOTH paitent and doctors in the proces of stabilizing the patient and in order to obtain the best possible results of psychotherapy.

To understand the answer fully, we will explain a bit deeper how NTX implant helps the patient and how it helps the doctor and how it helps the entire patient’s family.

* There are many studies of type : „NTX implants + psychotherapy VS psychotherapy (alone)“ which results are unambiguously and at the highest percentage in favor of the first option.)

Patients:

To say that the purpose of NTX implant is to block opiate receptors is very superficial. By blocking the receptors, NTX implant has a number of indirect effects , for example:

When a patient decides to stop taking drugs and begins to abstain, very quickly after that for various reasons the craving starts (psychological crisis). If there is a chance for relapse (ie.possibility for patient to reach the drugs somehow), in most cases psychological crisis starts and increasing each subsequent minute. That occurs exclusively and only because of the knowledge that there is a possibility(opportunity). And patient will struggle (because he does not want to take drugs) and this fight may last for some time, but the longer the crisis lasts it becomes stronger (goes upward on the scale) until the desire override and patient breaks.

NTX implant relieves patient from stress and desire (crisis) indirectly by reducing duration of the the crisis (desire). For example: If you have a desire (crisis) to do something (take drugs), and realize that it’s not possible to acheive that in the longer time period (1-2 years), that desire itself slowly begins to fade, it disappears, and you are forced to concentrate on something else (your life). Orienting on other things in life - the time that crisis takes for the original desire (to take drugs) decreases in a large extent (going downward on scale instead of upward) and after some time what remains are certain moments that last few minutes. At psychotherapeutic meetings, patient will concentrate on psychotherapy – not on how to „score“ (buy drugs) afterwards and psychotherapy alone will have better results. Doctors will have better results - doing their job without ussual side interference (relapses etc ...)

Doctors:

As we said at the beginning, many doctors do not approve the use of naltrexone implants - as a "quick fix" - and we agree with that entirely. However, as an integral part of the treatment (therapy), Naltrexone is evrything but "quick" - on the contrary – provides a plenty of time. While patient is on naltrexone implants, doctors have 1-2 years time without interrupting direction of the therapy to help patient regain his life. On the other hand, patient has 1-2 years of time to get used to a life without drugs. At the end of 1-2 years treatment, doctors will have 70-90% of patients completing the treatment (compared to less than 5%, which is the usual statistics).

Also, some doctors say implants just "buying time". - We also agree with them - Yes, implants are buying time for patients, for doctors and also for the patient’s family.What kind of time ntx. implant is buying was already explained above, and that is the constructive time for patients and for doctors to use it in the best possible way. How they are going to use it - depends exclusively on themselves , but ntx. implant, as a protection and indirect psyhological assistance tool, will always do it’s job.

As for the family:

With NTX implants, the patient does not require 24/7 control, and also enables immediate start of resocialization (ie. the closure and control by parents are not necessary). The patient may socialize, make friends (of course - selected company), to start finding a job, working, etc. ... which in turn frees the family from stress, worries and gives them opportunity to devote to their own lives.