A local physician is slamming Windsor's Brentwood Recovery Home for continuing to reject addicts who are using methadone.
Methadone is a legal substitute for heroin and other narcotics that helps stabilize the addict.
Dr. Tony Hammer says men using methadone who need residential treatment must travel to Guelph.
"Patients need access to both treatments at the same time, that is the best treatment available. The evidence is overwhelming," says Hammer. "And just to say that your philosophy gets in the way of you accepting patients on methadone really doesn't impress people like the Human Rights Commission."
"We're an abstinence-based program," says Bentwood executive director Dan Soulliere.
He says any drug, including methadone, masks what the real issues are -- "fear, insecurities, resentment, self-pity," Soulliere says.
It has been more than three years since Brentwood stopped accepting methadone patients.
"What good am I doing to a person if they're on methadone? Our whole philosophy here is abstinence," Soulliere says. "You don't need to be on any sort of drug whatsoever."
There's no need, according to Soulliere, for addicts on methadone to also be in a residential treatment facility.
But that's where Hammer completely disagrees. "I've got a patient now who was turned away from Brentwood because he was on methadone," he says.
"Six months later he was incarcerated, he's in the local jail on methadone and he's doing fine. When he comes out he's going to need help."
