Clinical Services
Medication-Assisted Treatment (MOUD)
Medication-Assisted Treatment combines FDA-approved medications with counseling and behavioral therapy. Clinicians now call this approach medications for opioid use disorder, or MOUD, and for alcohol, medications for alcohol use disorder, though many people still know it as MAT. SAMHSA recognizes the combination as a gold-standard practice that improves treatment retention and outcomes. At Everwell Recovery, medical staff use buprenorphine (Suboxone), naltrexone (Vivitrol), and acamprosate when clinically indicated: normalizing brain chemistry, blunting euphoria, easing cravings, and helping you function without intoxication.
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What This Work Looks Like
Easing Cravings and Withdrawal
The right medication can take withdrawal and cravings from overwhelming to manageable, which is often what makes staying in treatment possible at all. Paired with supervised withdrawal management, it turns the hardest days into workable ones.
Clinical detail
Buprenorphine, a partial opioid agonist, binds to mu (μ)-opioid receptors, easing withdrawal and cravings without producing the euphoria or dangerous respiratory depression of full agonists.
Blocking the Effect of a Relapse
Some medications work as a safety net: if a slip happens, the drug's effect is blocked, which breaks the reward cycle that turns a lapse into a full relapse.
Clinical detail
Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist: it occupies opioid receptors without activating them, providing a pharmacological blockade against the reinforcing effects of opioids (and reducing alcohol reward).
Staying Engaged in Treatment
People stabilized on appropriate medication stay in treatment longer and get more out of therapy. The medication quiets the noise so the clinical work can land.
Clinical detail
Improved retention and engagement is one of the most consistent findings in the research literature on MOUD (much of it published under the MAT label) and is central to why SAMHSA identifies it as a best practice.
Reducing the Risk of Fatal Overdose
Research supported by SAMHSA and NIDA has found that medication treatment for opioid use disorder substantially reduces overdose deaths, with studies reporting reductions of over 50% among people receiving these medications. This is a research finding, not a promise about any individual outcome.
Clinical detail
Cohort research (e.g., Sordo et al., BMJ 2017) associates opioid-agonist treatment with roughly half the overdose mortality of no treatment; NIDA summarizes this evidence base in its reports on medications for opioid use disorder.
MOUD is not substituting one dependency for another. Whether you know it as MAT or MOUD, it is a regulated, medically supervised stabilization and harm-reduction strategy, always paired with counseling and behavioral therapy, and used only when clinically indicated.
Conditions We Treat
Where Medication-Assisted Treatment (MOUD) Fits
This service is woven into treatment plans for the conditions below.
Questions About Medication-Assisted Treatment (MOUD)
Is MOUD just replacing one addiction with another?
No. Prescribed, supervised medications like buprenorphine and naltrexone stabilize brain chemistry without producing intoxication. SAMHSA and NIDA both identify this framing as a misconception. MOUD, the approach many people still call MAT, is a regulated medical treatment, not a substitute dependency.
Will I be on medication forever?
Duration is individual and decided with your medical team. Some people use MOUD briefly for stabilization; others benefit from longer courses. The goal is always your stability and safety, reviewed continuously.
Which medications does Everwell use?
Buprenorphine (Suboxone), naltrexone (Vivitrol), and acamprosate, prescribed when clinically indicated and always combined with counseling and behavioral therapy, the model known as MOUD or MAT.
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