Drug counselor touts endorphins as cure to opioid addiction
BUTLER TWP — Steve Treu knows the cure to opioid addiction.
Endorphins, he told a crowd of about 200 Tuesday night at Butler County Community College, is the cure.
“Everyone who has ever beaten addiction, whether they know it or not, has done it with endorphins,” he said.
Treu, an author and drug and alcohol counselor with Quantum Revolution Counseling in Cranberry Township, spoke as part of the kickoff event for BC3’s “Reset Your Brain” initiative, which also will include a series of classes this spring based on Treu’s writings.
In his presentation, he explained the chemical changes that happen in a person’s brain when they become addicted to opioids and talked about how he counsels addicts to get clean through medication and getting them to naturally produce endorphins again.
The human brain is like a pharmacy in that it is loaded with natural chemical counterparts to drugs such as alcohol, marijuana or heroin, he said.
Taking opioids creates a pleasant rush of endorphins in the brain. As a person continues to use opioids, their brain starts to grow more endorphin receptors and they start to have a higher tolerance for the drugs.
This chemical change “hijacks” the brain, Treu said. The change occurring on the cellular level is why medical experts have classified addiction as a disease.
A full story appears in Wednesday's Butler Eagle.
