When 21-year-old Jamie Caron got serious about kicking his seven-year narcotic habit last summer, the help he needed wasn’t there. He had enrolled at a Bangor counseling-based treatment program and tried to quit “cold turkey” – but talk therapy wasn’t much use when he was constantly ill, craving the daily dose of opiates his body had come to rely on.

“I was physically sick every day,” the Bangor area resident recalled in a recent interview, describing grueling days filled with hot flashes, chills, vomiting, continuous yawning, intense body aches and constant, bone-crushing fatigue.

Caron – not his real name – tried injecting morphine every other day, hoping to taper his use, but his “off day” symptoms were still intolerable, and before long he was shooting up daily again, just to be able to function.

“I realized this just wasn’t going to work,” he said. He went looking for help.

The methadone clinic at Acadia Hospital told him he didn’t have a bad enough problem to enroll there – “but I didn’t want to use methadone anyway,” he said. He had used it before, recreationally, to get high. The clinic and its rough clientele gave off “bad vibes,” he said, and the prospect of entering into what is, for many addicts, a lifelong dependency on methadone was frightening.

“To me, methadone is just another fix,” Caron said.

He had heard of a new drug, Suboxone, purported to be effective at controlling drug cravings without methadone’s side effects and intensely regulated protocols – but no one could tell him where to get it. “Acadia didn’t have it, and they couldn’t tell me anything about it,” he said.

Eventually, Caron was given the name of an area physician, one of just a handful of Maine doctors certified to prescribe buprenorphine, the primary component of Suboxone. But because federal law limits medical offices to treating no more than 30 addiction patients at a time with buprenorphine, Caron had to wait several months for an appointment.

It was a period that tried his resolve. Continuing his narcotic use was the only way he could function until his appointment, but obtaining the drugs brought him regular contact with the very world he was trying to leave behind.

Finally, in October 2003, he met with the doctor. After an intensive interview and examination he signed a contract agreeing to discontinue all recreational drugs and to seek regular counseling and support through a local treatment program. He took a dose and went home with instructions to return the next day for an assessment and dose adjustment. Within hours, he said, “I felt normal.” No high, no drowsiness, no early morning trips to a clinic – no big deal.

Caron has a full-time job now and plans to attend one of Maine’s community colleges this fall. He’s still going for counseling, and his daily dose of Suboxone has been increased some since that first week. Maybe someday he’ll discontinue the drug that has restored him, but he’s in no hurry.

“It makes me feel like I used to,” Caron said – and that’s just how he wants to feel.

There are three things Caron wants to make clear. During the years he used drugs – starting in middle school – he never stole money from his employer to support his habit. He never stole merchandise from stores, either, although he did “return” items his buddies had shoplifted from Home Depot and Toys R Us, and he used the money to buy drugs. And he never shared his needles.

“No matter what I did, I always had a conscience,” he said. “I was always thinking about my parents, and my grandparents – what it would do to them if I got caught.