Effective Drug Addiction Treatment Is Not Methadone
A methadone clinic opened up about two years ago in Indiana. The goal was to provide a closer location for those on methadone treatment - which is supposed to help heroin addicts through withdrawal so they can then get through drug rehab at a drug addiction treatment center so they’ll be drug free.
I get tons of responses from readers of this blog whenever I write about methadone treatment. They tell me how it’s saved their lives and that it was a last resort.
According to a recent news article, the clinic in Indiana is using it as anything but a last resort. The requirements for getting methadone from this clinic are that the person has been addicted to an opiate for at least one year. And many of the people they’re servicing are addicted to prescription drugs - it’s opiates, so it would be OxyContin or a similar painkiller - that they were given by their doctor and then couldn’t quit.
Wow. So much for methadone treatment being used as a last resort.
“They don’t want to lose their job or lose their kids,” said the program director. “They come to us because they want to be safe, and they want to be legal.”
So, now, instead of long-time heroin addicts being addicted to methadone, we have people addicted to methadone because they couldn’t quit taking OxyContin or some similar drug because of surgery or an illness.
The program director says they’re supposed to get daily methadone for a while but are supposed to start weaning off it within three to six months. He said it works for some, and not for others. Of course. That’s because they’re getting methadone instead of going to a drug addiction treatment center that can help them with their addiction.
Prescription drug addiction - especially OxyContin addiction or addiction to another painkiller - is like heroin addiction. Just like we’ve been saying. And, like heroin addiction, the solution is drug rehab. Not methadone.
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You really don’t “get it” do you?
Addiction is a disease and the “Cure” for that disease isn’t getting “off drugs”. The truth is your an addict whether your on drugs, methadone or completely drug free.
Methadone IS NOT MEANT to take someone through rehab and then make them drug free. Methadone treats the SYMPTOMS OF THE ILLNESS OF ADDICTION (craving, lethargy, depression, suicidal ideation etc)–methadone is to opiate addiction as prozac is to depression.
This is the future of addiction treatment. In the works are treatments for alcoholism, stimulant abuse and other opiate addiction medications. For too long people have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatment that doesn’t work.
After all, what OTHER mental or physical illness would we EVER expect a person to get better simply by praying, counseling or talking?
Futhermore, whats the point of stopping using drugs if your just as miserable OFF them as you are on them? Isn’t the whole point of treating an illness to give back quality of LIFE when cure isn’t possible?
I have known MANY addicts on methadone that were light years ahead of 12steppers in their “recovery” or “remission” from their illness….because they didn’t spend even more than two minutes in the morning (long enough to drink their medication) thinking about addiction, drugs, getting high or how TO stay clean. They just live their lives.
Comment by labrat — July 28, 2008 @ 12:56 pm