DR. PETER GOOCH LEAVING FOR NANAIMO

The lakecity is losing another doctor.

Dr. Peter Gooch is edging into retirement by taking a day job in Nanaimo
with a drug treatment clinic.

"I'm becoming a specialist in heroin and cocaine addiction," says Gooch.

Gooch has been a family doctor and an anaesthesiologists in Williams Lake
for the past 18 years.

While his new job, will mean no more middle of the night calls, it will
mean a lot of travel.

His home base will be in Nanaimo but he will also be spending a couple of
days a week at the Metaclinic drug treatment clinics in Prince George and
Port Alberni.

"I've been interested in chemical dependency my whole career," says Gooch,
who was introduced to the treatment field years ago while working as a
young doctor in Prince Rupert.

Gooch has been making the transition to drug treatment over the past 10
years in his family practice and has been actively working methadone
patients for the past four years.

He has taken special training through the College of Physicians and
Surgeons in Vancouver to become a specialist in the treatment of heroin and
cocaine addiction.

For the past year he has been spending a couple of days a week alternating
between the Prince George and Nanaimo treatment clinics.

"I've been travelling a lot in the past year which gets pretty exhausting
in the middle of winter," says Gooch.

The Metaclinic team includes a psychiatrist, counsellor, nurse and Dr. Gooch.

The team members are all specially trained to help people deal with their
drug problem and other health problems.

Gooch says that most of the patients he sees are older and have been
struggling with a heroin addiction for five, 10 or even 20 years.

"They are tired, tired of the whole lifestyle and just want out of it,"
says Gooch.

"The type of patients I tend to see, their lives are often in turmoil.
Sometimes they have no roof over their heads."

He says a doctor is required on a treatment team because only a doctor can
prescribe the heroin substitute methadone.

While some people believe you are not curing the drug problem by
prescribing methadone because it is just a replacement for heroin, Gooch
says methadone is much less damaging to the patient than heroin.

"The whole idea is to facilitate harm reduction," says Dr. Gooch. "The drug
I am giving is safe, long acting, and given by mouth which is much safer
than taking four or five injections of heroin a day."

Even with a clean needle he says there are serious health risks when people
shoot heroin. He says the heroin highs are a short four hours or so and
then the person goes into painful withdrawals if another fix is not
available. By comparison, he says methadone is taken once a day by mouth.
The effect lasts 24 to 36 hours and there are no highs or lows.

In the beginning he will see a heroin patient once a day while the dose of
methadone is being adjusted to the amount of heroin the patient was using.
"You start low and increase the methadone until the withdrawal symptoms
stop," says Gooch.

Once the person has stabilized on the methadone he will see them once a month.

He says many of his clients are also being treated for diseases such as
AIDS and Hepatitis C which often come with the lifestyle associated with
drug addiction.

He says Hepatitis C is a very dangerous disease that can lead to liver
cancer and liver failure.

Metaclinic is specially licensed to treat heroin and cocaine addicts. The
program has about 150 patients in Prince George and another 150 in Nanaimo.
They don't know yet how many clients they will be working with at the new
clinic in Port Alberni that is opening this week.

Gooch will be making the move to Nanaimo with his partner Catherine Hudson,
who will be working in geriatric psychiatry.

Moving to Nanaimo will also put him closer to his son, Simon, who is
working in Victoria and daughter, Samantha, who started medical school at
the University of British Columbia this fall.

His daughter Natasha is spending this year on a student exchange in Norway.
"I'll miss friends and colleagues who I've been working with for a long
time ... but I'm also looking forward to not having winters anymore," says
Gooch. He is also looking forward to a steady day job with no more middle
of the might emergency calls and having more time for his music.

"I don't have to get up in the middle of the night again. Its a
semi-retirement for me," says Gooch.

While Gooch says the move to Nanaimo is a good one for him at this stage of
his life, it is not so good for Cariboo Memorial Hospital.

"The hospital is down to four anaesthetists which will make this harder for
everyone. We are already several GPs short right now."

Gooch will give a farewell concert with his lakecity musical friends this
Saturday evening at the Bil-Nor.

"I am looking forward to playing at the Bil-Nor Saturday. That will be
fun," says Gooch.