When it comes to alcoholism or addiction issues, the last person you should consult with is your doctor. I know that suggestion is counter-intuitive to what you’ve been led to believe, but all you have to do is look around, turn on the television or pick up a magazine or newspaper to realize that society is losing the war on drugs and alcohol.

Too many physicians possess little knowledge about addiction. I work in healthcare and continue to be dismayed by what I see. Patients whose underlying problem is substance abuse flock to the hospital in droves; they have dirty urine’s that prove they have substance abuse issues, and what do the doctors do? They prescribe more medication!

I believe the doctors mean well, but the truth is they have no clue what they’re doing. Most doctors don’t understand addiction, and so rather than admit they don’t understand what to do with the alcoholic/addict, and reach out for more knowledge and training, they coddle the alcoholic by buying into their never ending sob stories and prescribe a common cocktail of Buspar, Neurontin, and Effexor. The doctors somehow believe that if they treat the patient’s anxiety and depression, they’ll cure them. This practice is absurd, and it keeps far too many people stuck in their disease. When a person drinks a depressant every day, which alcohol is, how can they not feel depressed? The only way to help a person in the throes of addiction is to be able to recognize the problem in the first place.

My mother wasted precious decades of her life listening to doctors. She was addicted to Valium and later alcohol and Valium, and not one time in twenty-five years did any of the doctors call her out for what she was—an alcoholic. Instead, she spent her days getting obliterated, was admitted to the psych ward for “depression,” where they’d pump her full of more pills and after a few days or a week, they’d send her home. Sadly, this was the practice back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and to my dismay, not much has changed. I work as a psych RN and the exact same scenario plays out, day after day, in hospitals all over the country.

Why has so little progress been made? I have a few theories: Most doctors don’t care to admit that they don’t know what they’re doing. Doctors are trained to prescribe, and few doctors want to take the holistic approach. Medicine is a money machine. Our system is not set up to promote wellness. All of the advertising we see would have you believe otherwise, but once you’re on the inside of healthcare and see how things work, it’s appalling—and sad.

Another weak link in the system is that we have insurance reviewers on the other end of the line that try to dictate what medications people should take. The insurance reviewers don’t want anyone staying in the psych ward unless the doctors are “managing” their medication, and that translates to doctors adding and subtracting medications until the patient is discharged.

I occasionally work in utilization review (UR) and I even had one case manager ask me why the doctor hadn’t prescribed Ativan to help one patient sleep. Was she nuts? What is wrong with that suggestion? The last thing someone with an alcohol or drug problem needs is another highly addictive benzodiazepine. We’re creating our own mess, the problem gets bigger and bigger, and the too many doctors have no clue.

Last month around St. Paddy’s day, I even heard one psychiatrist say that he wasn’t going to discharge his alcoholic patient because the patient told him he might “drink” if he was discharged. Might drink? Believe me, an alcoholic or drug addict doesn’t need an excuse like St. Paddy’s day to drink and use. Regardless if it’s March seventeenth or March eighteenth, if the doctor understood alcoholism/addiction, he would’ve understood that one day wouldn’t make a difference to the person who was hell bent on a bender!

It’s a pathetic broken system, with far too many people operating within the system who have little knowledge about addiction.

So what’s the solution? Many doctor’s need to admit they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand that addiction/alcoholism is a brain disease; a thinking problem and a perception problem. Doctors need to be willing to educate themselves about the disease of addiction, and start listening to the people who have been through addiction and come out on the other side; those are the real experts.

We need more recovery houses, and we need more chemical dependency (CD) counselors who have suffered with alcoholism, and are now in recovery, as opposed to young millennial’s who go to college and get their CD license with no prior knowledge, experience, or exposure to addicts and alcoholics. The old adage, “you can’t con a con” has never been truer than when it comes to alcoholism.

If you or a loved one has a problem, I would suggest you seek out someone in recovery and ask them for referrals. There are plenty of physicians in recovery, but most won’t out themselves to the general public, but they may help you if you approach them through the backdoor of recovery rooms.

What are your thoughts and experiences with the medical community? Let’s talk!