In the new episode of House – hey, why not? Millions of people get their drug information from big pharma commercials, why not a TV series? – the doc in chronic pain changes his life completely by switching his drug of choice from Vicodin to methadone.  He’s long been suffering from prescription drug addiction, but the new one changed his personality. When his colleagues noticed his change in behavior they suspected he was on heroin. But they were outraged to find that he was on methadone instead. They said that mixing methadone with another drug, taking one drink of alcohol or taking one dose at the wrong time could kill him. And that he was twice as likely to die from methadone as from heroin.

Well, yeah, it’s a TV show. But the statistics on methadone-related deaths show the data is correct nevertheless. As of a few years ago, heroin was used by about twice as many people as methadone, but twice as many died from methadone as heroin. In fact, that means it killed four times as many people, not twice as many.

And now that methodone is being used strictly as a painkiller, not to get off heroin, the primary original use for which methadone was intended, the methadone-related death statistics are climbing.

People often don’t follow their doctor’s exact instructions no matter what medication they’re taking and no matter what warnings they’re given.  Things can be even worse with methadone since it stays in the body for longer than other drugs and might still be there even though the pain relief aspect of it has worn off. So, people tend to take their dose sooner than they should, or take a different painkiller, think they’re safe to have a drink, and so on.

The hospital administrator’s solution was to tightly control House’s methadone use. He had to get his precisely-timed dose from her and, although we didn’t see the list of other instructions she gave him, I would imagine they also included absolutely no alcohol and no other drugs without first clearing it with her.

In the end, House decided not to take it. He had made a nearly fatal error with a patient and felt the methadone had clouded his judgment.

In any case, him being on methadone wouldn’t have worked for the series because one of it’s main attractions (in the same way people are driven to slow down to see a bad traffic accident) is House’s personality – which completely changed during this episode.

TV show or not, I hope people take this information about methadone to heart. It may not tell the whole truth, but it has more truth in it than any of the ads you’ll see on TV from drug manufacturers. Unless, of course, you happen to listen to the warnings – which are issued in such soothing tones they somehow don’t manage to get the point across that the drugs are very dangerous. That’s why the prescription drug death toll is climbing, and that’s why more and more people are finally getting the message and showing up in addiction treatment centers to get off them.

Boy, I’ll bet this episode will have some people up in arms. 

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