MANCHESTER, NH — An addiction treatment clinic, designed to help patients still in recovery get back to work and everyday life, opened Friday at the corner of Union and Webster streets.
New England Medicine & Counseling Associates, which has other facilities in Lebanon, Maine, Winooski, Vt., and Grantham, is headed up by Dr. Adnan Khan.
Khan lived on Central Street as a child before moving to Malden, Mass., and later went to medical school in Europe. His cousins remained in the city. One of them, Adele Tahir, told him he should bring his clinic to the Queen City because of the opiate epidemic.
And that’s exactly what he did.
Khan said the clinic is for the “mature patient,” one who is further along in recovery, back to work and to everyday life. Some recovery programs, he explained, have numerous mandatory counseling sessions, making it difficult for someone who is working to get to those meetings or appointments. Patients, he explained, have to ask for time off, which can be problematic because treatment is confidential.
So, NEMCA, which is a Suboxone Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) clinic, came up with a program for once-a-month sessions. It provides therapy, medication management and individual physician visits. They also provide medical marijuana certification for qualified residents of New Hampshire. You can read more on NH’s Therapeutic Cannabis Program here, via the DHHS website.
There are currently cannabis dispensaries located in Merrimack, Plymouth, Dover and Lebanon.
According to the Addiction Center, Suboxone is the brand name for the medication that contains buprenorphine and naloxone. Buprenorphine blocks the opiate receptors and reduces a person’s urges. Naloxone helps reverse the effects of opioids.
The drug is now the preferred treatment of opioid addiction and is used more than methadone, which the Addiction Center says can be habit-forming.
