Northern Ky. doctor who treats 300 addicts says many doctors don’t treat them because it’s not easy and often frustrating

“The sooner everyone understands that addiction needs to be treated as a disease, the sooner communities will make progress in battling the problem.” So says Dr. Mike Kalfas of Northern Kentucky “who treats over 300 addicts in his family practice,” Don Weber reports for cn|2‘s “Pure Poliics.”

Kalfas told Weber that doctors are frustrated, and discouraged from treating addicts, by the lack of an easy solution, unlike many diseases and disorders. “You have to understand their disease and see where they are in it, and you have to be able to roll with the punches in that disease,” Kalfas said. “It’s not simply something that you treat once and it goes away. It’s not strep throat.”

Kalfas worries about the growing use of the terrifically potent fentanyl, but “sees some good things happening in response to the heroin epidemic in northern Kentucky,” Weber reports. “He points out that jails in Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties have instituted substance abuse programs, which, in some circumstances change inmates into patients. He says the continued key will be to revamp how addiction is looked at, and learn to treat it as a disease.”