| About Us | Treatment Information | Patient and Family Experiences | What's New | Frequently Asked Questions |
"Dorothea" created and headed the parents/friends advocacy group in Germany and was an important influential factor in getting methadone treatment legalized in that country. She presented this on November 30, 1987 at a conference in Germany on AIDS and drug addiction.
How much longer will we refuse humane help for addicts in our country?
I am the mother of a son who has been opiate dependent for more than 15 years. I shared and suffered with him all the stages of the disease which are inescapably associated with the life of an addict in the Federal Republic.
I don't know how my son was able to tolerate this, and I don't know how I was able to tolerate it. My husband died as a result of this experience.
Such a report will not surprise you; it definitely is not unique. What is special in all this is that my son, after fourteen years, finally obtained effective help: he was accepted into methadone treatment.
The change was unimaginable. He was no longer faced with the threat of prosecution; his health improved amazingly; he once again had hope and plans; and he took his first steps toward making up for lost time with job training and with all that is associated with a normal life.
While he was in treatment I came to know a number of other patients and I learned of their histories. Their results also were a source of amazement – indeed, fascination. When we parents heard talk of zombies or words like that, we could only stare incomprehensibly. We knew that they couldn't possibly be referring to patients treated with methadone. Similarly, nobody could convince us of the alleged disadvantages or negative side effects of substitution treatment. We simply knew better, because we saw the effects of medication-supported therapy on our own children. We began to collect proof of employment in order to be able to demonstrate the effects of treatment, and founded an organization called "Parental Help for Addicts".
Then, after a very brief period of hope of a new beginning for my son and myself, a catastrophe hit: the physician was arrested, the practice was ended and roughly 100 patients were kicked back into misery, need and desperation. My son, no longer seeing any way out, tried to hang himself. I found him, and was able to cut him down in time.
There followed more psychiatric admissions, and the threat of being committed forever. He escaped this fate by feigning a willingness to accept enrollment in another long-term therapy program.
But this part of the history, also is not unique: one of my wards was a very talented 24-year-old who with the help of methadone was able to continue his studies. After the enforced termination of treatment, on my advice, he entered a long-term therapy program. After three weeks he broke it off, returned to Munich and jumped out a fourth floor window onto the street. His last words: "I simply can't tolerate the therapy anymore, and I do not want to return to criminality."
After the police forced the closing of the physician's practice, I was drawn even closer to the other parents. Others joined us and we did everything in our power in order to help the unfortunates. In vain! The only effective help, medical treatment, was rendered impossible. Responsible physicians who were prepared to provide this treatment through a loophole that exists in the legal system were warned through every possible pressure that they would share the same fate as the arrested physician.
And thus began for most of the patients the damnable downward spiral: illegal drugs, the needle with all of its health risks, prostitution, criminality, prison, illness, suicide and death.
In light of all of this, I ACCUSE - in the name of the general society, because of the failure to prevent the impairment to health and the threat of suicide, and because of the failure to prevent criminal activities.
I ACCUSE, in the name of thousands of addicts and their relatives, because of bodily harm resulting from failure to provide help and because of refusal to make treatment possible.
I ACCUSE because of the toleration and the causation of unspeakable misery and damage to the body and soul of thousands of addicts, their relatives and the physicians who responsibly seek to care for them.
This speech was presented on November 30, 1987 at a conference in Germany on AIDS and drug addiction. When it was subsequently distributed in printed form, it ended with the following epilogue:
Today, on the 2nd of June, 1988, I can bring to a final conclusion my "report of a mother." My son, for 15 years persecuted and hunted, no longer saw any way out, and put an end to his desperate life. Methadone could have been his savior.
I ACCUSE!
DOROTHEA KLIEBER
GERMANY
Have an Opinion or Issue you would like to discuss? Submit it here. We will make every attempt to share all views and issues submitted. Unfortunately there is limited space, so editing decisions will be made.