Dr George O’Neil’s Fresh Start clinic the last hope for desperate ice addicts
SOME people call the founder of the Fresh Start ice rehab clinic a quack. But for the desperate ice addicts that arrive at his door — he is their saviour.
National
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EACH Saturday and Wednesday morning, ice addicts from all over Australia arrive at the door of Dr George O’Neil’s Fresh Start clinic in Perth. He is their last hope.
Dr O’Neil has been variously described as a quack and a saint for his on-the-spot operations where he inserts crave-reducing Naltrexone implants into the stomach linings of addicts.
Dr O’Neil, 66, produces the implants in a small factory across from his Subiaco clinic and offers the $6000 treatment to all addicts, whether they can afford it or not.
It is the only medicine-based drug treatment facility in the country, though St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney has run an eight-year trial treating ice users with Dexamphetamine, with what is says are “promising” results.
The idea is that Dexamphetamine — already prescribed to ice users by some private doctors — balances the extreme highs of ice, in the same way hyperactive ADHD children are prescribed amphetamine-based Ritalin.
However, Dr O’Neil argues this will create a new era of prescription speed addicts, just as heroin users who turn to methadone often stay lifelong users, never fully cured.
“In Australia, opiate addicts are given opiates (methadone) to keep them addicted,” says Dr O’Neil, warning that such “replacement therapy” doesn’t help users or families.
Unlike methadone and Dexamphetamine, Naltrexone is not addictive and doesn’t create an altered state: it works by blocking receptors in the brain.
“The argument here is for full recovery, for the families that want their kids back,” says Dr O’Neil, who says Naltrexone gives families a break and allows users to make genuine decisions about rehab.
We met Daniel Carling, 36, from Roebourne in WA’s north, who six months earlier had received implants and was back to top up as he felt his cravings return.
On ice, he says he was into “stealing. Fighting, DV, all that crap but the implants have helped me a lot. For the first time, I’ve got a job, a house and I’ll soon get a car.”
Melissa Collins, 28, has come from Canberra, having used ice and heroin for 15 years. She wants to try the implants, because she’s fighting to get her eight-year-old son back.
She wants to cut her ties with drugs altogether and does not want to take a cure that involves using another drug to replace her addictions. “The only cure for ice is abstinence,” she says.
Naltrexone is still considered an experimental drug that got some bad raps when used to treat heroin addicts who, when they ceased using Naltrexone, went back to heroin and overdosed because they had lost their tolerance.
However, those patients took oral Naltrexone, where the efficacy vanishes rapidly and addicts are caught out, seeking an instant big hit. Implants taper off slowly.
Dr O’Neil says he’s treated 9,000 patients in 18 years and never had a death, either of a heroin or ice user, who are now the majority of his clients.
“It won’t work by itself,” says Dr O’Neil, who makes no claims for Naltrexone as a miracle drug. He requires patients to receive counselling and offers rehab facilities for those who are considered extreme.
One of them, Matt Boyd, 26, is back seeking help after getting implants and falling off the wagon. He stayed clean for six months but didn’t keep up the implant treatment.
He went back on ice and was sent to a doctor who prescribed him a huge concoction of uppers and downers — including Dexamphetamine, Xanax, oxycodone and Tramadol — to manage his addiction.
He’s turning to Dr O’Neil again.
Dr O’Neil and Naltrexone are not fringe players. The Department of Veterans Affairs has approved Fresh Start’s Naltrexone program for vets suffering PTSD; and the WA Government funds $3m of Fresh Start’s $10m annual budget, which mostly comes from donations and Dr O’Neil’s pocket.
Federal politicians, including Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop, promised him big money while in Opposition. It never arrived.
Now with ice use crossing the country, and users crossing the country to seek his help, Dr O’Neil claims he’s going broke and wants the feds to help.
“We know the people we’re seeing are getting better,” he says.
Ms Bishop said: “Should Dr O’Neil make application to the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) for naltrexone to be used in the treatment of ice addiction, I would be happy to continue to support his work.”
Dr O’Neil said he already “needed TGA consent for every gram of Naltrexone implant we import, because we need their consent. So we are working with them continually”.
He said he would be glad to meet Ms Bishop, his local federal member, to update her.
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