Zac Talbott sees the irony of running an opioid treatment program from a former doctor's office.
"The funny thing is, a lot of patients are like, 'This is where I first started getting prescribed pain pills,' " Talbott says.
Now, the Tennessee native says those same patients are coming to his clinic in Chatsworth, Ga., a small city about a half-hour south of the Tennessee border, to fight their addiction to those very pills.
Outpatient clinics like the one Talbott co-owns dispense drugs like methadone and buprenorphine, which are legal synthetic opioids that block cravings and withdrawal symptoms. Federal health officials say this medication-assisted treatment, coupled with counseling, is the best way to treat an addiction to prescription painkillers or heroin. Patients are required to show up a set-number of times a week — the number of visits determined by how long they've been receiving treatment — to take their medicine in front of a nurse.
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