Drug Rehab Is More Expensive Than Methadone, But Do You Really Want to Be Drugged?
People taking methadone will find drug detox or drug rehab is more expensive than methadone maintenance. It costs roughly $4,000 a year to keep someone on methadone - a drug detox may cost $5,000 to $10,000, and a drug rehab program may cost three times that, and sometimes more. So why bother going through any sort of drug detox or drug rehab program?
One reason is you are more likely to die when you are taking prescription drugs than if you aren’t. There were 58 methadone-related deaths in Connecticut in 2006 and about 4,000 nationwide. One doctor says that methadone use needs to be monitored very closely, something that is not likely in this day and age. Doctors as a group don’t spend the time with their patients to closely monitor what they are doing. There are several ways you could die from methadone, using it as prescribed, abusing it, and using or abusing it mixed with some other drug or alcohol. Xanax is one of the more common drugs people mix with methadone – a very dangerous combination. Of course, methadone does not have to kill you, but the chances are it may kill one or two out of a hundred.
From a financial standpoint, getting off methadone makes more sense if you have a four-year time horizon and you look five years into the future. Then, there’s no question which is better.
Let’s say you have been taking methadone for pain but you are now dependent on it and have tried to stop but can’t - an inpatient drug detox could be your best bet. If you are on it for other, non-medical, reasons then a drug detox followed by a drug rehab is a good idea.
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Leading people to believe that they are likely to drop dead from taking methadone for a heavy opiate addiction AS PRESCRIBED by a competent physician is ludicrous. There have been a VERY small number of cases where people in pain management died because their doctors did not take time to titrate their initial doses properly. However, the recent rise in deaths associated with methadone almost always involve other drugs–usually benzos–and almost always involve taking medications not prescribed for them or in doses larger than what was prescribed. Methadone has been taken safely for severe opiate addiction for almost 50 years now. It is NOT appropriate for a young person with a 5 or 10 pill a day opiate habit, no, but for those with long term heavy habits who have been unable to quit with the spin dry rehabs, methadone is far and away the most successful treatment available.
Di I want to feel “drugged”? Talk about a loaded question! Methadone is used precisely because it does NOT make most patients feel “drugged”. Stable, tolerant patients do not feel their dose at all. If they do, they are either mixing drugs or on too high a dose. I would much rather take a daily medication and go about my life than struggle through another rehab (this would be #14 for me), give them another $30,000, and relapse the day I come out.
Methadone stabilizes the brain chemistry of certain long term opiate addicts who no longer have a functioning endorphin system. Studies show that permanent changes in brain chemistry can occur with long term opiate abuse, necessitating pharmacological treatment to restore equilibrium. There is nothing wrong or shameful in this, and it IS wrong to imply that there is, or that your brand of “recovery” is superior to or better than someone else’s.
Comment by zenith — March 9, 2008 @ 7:27 am
Drug rehabs just do not work for at least 98% of the peeople who have been there and done that. Talk about a waste of money and time. Will power does not work on this disease any more than having cancer. Please try to understand that people who need methadone have damaged the chemistry of their brain. Some alot worse than others and only a medication can help these people.The amount of time that someone needs to remain on this drug varies. As it does for chemo treatment.
I wish people would stop writin this BS that people with an opiate addiction could and should pick themselves up by the bootstraps and get into drug treatment and yes it will be hard but in time we can beat this disease. NO. It will not happen. Willpower will not work and people with this disease should not be made to feel as though they are weak to need a drug to help them feel better any more than anyone with a disease that needs a drug to help them get by.
PLEASE leave us alone so we can continue day by day to live a normal and productive life. There is no cure and you do not have the answers. For now all that we have to help us is methadone. It’s not a cure in itself but it keeps the symptoms at bay so we can continue to live our lives.
Comment by wendy wassall — March 9, 2008 @ 8:46 am
I went to rehab a few times also; stayed one time for 111 days and went to secondary “sober living” and still started again. I started pills 16 taking them for severe migrane headaches and I would be so sick from the heacache I would not be able to take them all. The doctor was prescribing 30-40 a time and I would get a migrane a couple of times of month, sometimes. So the pills had piled up in the drawer and I started takeing them when I did not have a headache and for 15 years I took and craved pills pills. I was to were I have taken 100 lotabs 10’s in a day. I’ve met one other person that did that and he is dead!!! Like the eariler post my endorphines are totally messed up. I hurt and feel bad all the time. Plus I have fractured 3 disk in my back, so I also have crhonic pain so enevitably I will have to take a pain pill at times so a relaps would always be there lurking and I ‘ve paid way above $1000 a day for a drug rehab that did not work. Methadone has been the most studied drug ever. and is safer than taking Loratabs FOR AN OPIATE TOLERANT PERSON because of all the tylenol IN THE lORATBAS. Plus I don’t have cravings, I’m not high, and I can fuction, and be a dependable person, a good wife and mama. My son is on honor roll doing great in school, our bills are paid on time. And we went on vaction last year!!!!! My sons first!!!!!
With methadone maintance I am able to be the person I need to be and not be useless.
It is not for everybody!!!! And is dangerous when mixed with other drugs, and the people that I know die from drug od had mixed them with others. ALWAYS and methadone was singled out and got the blame!!
Comment by Kei — March 9, 2008 @ 8:09 pm