Okay – so they’re about to throw in the towel on the addicts. After a two-year trial, they’ve concluded that parking heroin addicts on heroin is a better idea than parking them on methadone – at great expense to the taxpayer, who will foot the bill, an infinitely larger bill than ‘methadone maintenance.’

Not that the government owes heroin addicts anything, but there are good drug rehab programs around that would get heroin addicts clean and sober – they just don’t seem to invest the time and money into really understanding addiction and figuring out what program(s) will work. And, really, if you want fewer heroin addicts, the last thing you want to do is support the habit and thereby condemn addicts to lifelong addiction.

Now they’re opening the door to more and more heroin addicts, and fewer and fewer productive and functional citizens.

I wonder if that’s what will eventually happen in the U.S. The so-called War on Drugs isn’t successful – there are more addicts of one sort or another now than ever, despite the fact that $ billions have been spent on fighting the war.

I’d like to know what people think of this as a solution.

Do you have an opinion? Do you have a better solution?

If you are looking at drug rehab options, there’s one specific method of so-called drug treatment that you really don’t want – and that’s methadone treatment.

Methadone treatment is used for people addicted to heroin or other opiates – like prescription painkillers.

Sometimes methadone is recommended as a ‘stop gap’ – a drug to take that will prevent withdrawal symptoms but does not get you high. You should know that people who are put on methadone for this reason almost never get into drug rehab. They are given methadone for years. Sometimes for life.

Other people, usually those who have gone back to taking drugs after drug rehab, are told that their body is no longer capable of producing the natural endorphins that make us ‘happy’, and that their only choice is to take methadone.

What has usually happened there is that the person hasn’t done a good drug addiction treatment program – and there are plenty out there that usually don’t work.

People who are on methadone, and have been on it for some time, say that the drug has no negative affect. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that it does.

A recent study in Norway, for example, found that people who are on methadone are twice as likely to have car accidents as those who are not on it. For the study, they spent two years following 2,500 people who were on methadone.

Perhaps the worst thing about methadone is that it’s almost impossible to quit. It’s harder to get off it than heroin and the prescription painkillers the person was taking before. In fact, many drug rehab centers won’t even accept someone on methadone because getting off the drug is so very difficult – even when being treated by professionals who’ve gotten hundreds of people off heroin and prescription opiates.

The real solution to opiate addiction is a good drug rehab program. One that has a very high success rate. At Drug Rehab Referral, we’ve helped thousands of people get off those drugs.

If you’re looking into drug rehab, check with us first. We can help you find the addiction treatment program that’s most likely to guarantee success. Of course, there are no real guarantees, but you might as well start off with a program that has a better chance of success than with one that has a low success rate.

The alternative is having an addict go through treatment and fail – in which case they lose their faith that they can actually get off drugs and are more likely to fall for the idea that they need to be drugged forever – on methadone.

A recent article regarding heroin addicts in the UK says the government – i.e. the taxpayers – is spending 3.6 billion pounds (that’s nearly $6 billion dollars) to keep heroin addicts addicted to methadone. At the same time, the number of those addicts actually being referred to a drug rehab program where they can become totally free of drugs has dropped dramatically.

There is somewhere between 150,000 and 320,000 heroin/methadone/opiate addicts on the UK’s drug addiction sponsorship programs: here’s an example of what the British taxpayers are financing:

$1.2 million a year on methadone.

$2.8 billion a year on welfare payments

$1.9 billion a year on looking after the children of drug addicts

Wow.

The original intention of the methadone program – except for a very few addicts – was to use the drug to help wean them off heroin; to prevent them from having to go through the horrible withdrawal side effects that so often stops heroin addicts from kicking the habit.

Methadone is not a solution. It’s much, much more difficult to get someone off methadone than heroin. Many facilities in the U.S. won’t even accept methadone addicts in their drug rehab program. So methadone doesn’t free the person of anything – it imprisons them.

So, what about real drug rehab for these addicts? Of these 150,000 or 320,000 people (whatever the real number is) only 3,914 per year are referred for actual drug rehab. In fact, there are only 1,872 ‘affordable’ – which is being defined at about $1000 a week – beds in drug rehab facilities in the entire country.

A real lose/lose situation. Everybody loses – the addicts, the government, the families of addicts, the British taxpayer. Everyone in the country is paying to keep addicts addicted.

The very disturbing thing about this is that there is a similar trend in the U.S. Britain was one of the first countries to offer methadone as a solution. Now, decades later, it’s glaringly obvious that the great methadone experiment has failed. Let’s hope the U.S. is paying attention and learns from Britain’s mistakes.

If you know of someone who is addicted to heroin – or other opiates, which methadone is also used for – methadone is not the answer;  methadone is not drug rehab, it is continued drug addiction.

When someone you care about is addicted to heroin or other opiates, it’s tempting to do something to ‘quiet’ things down. Methadone addicts who are getting their drugs inexpensively, or, sometimes, free, often stop causing trouble. Like ‘psychiatric’ patients who are given drugs to calm them down – often to the point where they’re just sitting in a chair staring at whatever’s in front of them. Sure, with the right drug, no one causes trouble.

But is that really all you want? Wouldn’t you prefer to get them help so they can end their dependency on drugs and get back to leading a normal, productive life?

Only a good drug rehab program can do that. And by ‘good’, I don’t mean one of those 30-day things that get the person off drugs temporarily but, because they don’t thoroughly deal with why they got on drugs in the first place or how they’re going to stay off them when they get back into their regular environment, rarely gets permanent results. A good drug rehab program includes those steps. And, for the vast majority of addicts, it’s the only thing that works.

Don’t settle for less. Get your life back.

This story is about a newborn. Mom had taken OxyContin for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, then switched to methadone. So, the baby winds up being born addicted to methadone and going through opiate withdrawals.

To help the baby, the doctors finally had to give the baby methadone. The baby will have to stay in the hospital for weeks while being weaned off the drug.

In the meantime, you have a very unhappy baby who’s in pain and starting off life in just about the worst way I can think of. In fact, the news item describes it as ‘excrutiating.’

Before going on methadone, you might consider whether it’s possible that you may be or get pregnant. In which case, actually getting off drugs is the better option.

In fact, not being drugged at all is always a better option – unless you have a physical situation that is intolerably painful and renders you basically disabled. Which is the case with some people who use methadone. But short of that, a good drug rehab program will get you off methadone and get your body rehabilitated so you don’t need it.

The first study gave placebos to people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). They told them the pills were placebos, but also told them that IBS has been helped by placebos. Not only did the placebos work, they actually had better results than recent studies done on the drugs doctors would normally prescribe for the condition.

The second study hooked people up to an intravenous drip and applied heat to their legs to the point of causing pain. The researchers then told the participants that they were putting a powerful painkiller into their IV. The pain abated. The participants were then told that the painkiller going through their IV had been stopped, at which point the pain returned to the pre-painkiller levels. But, the drug had not actually been stopped – they were still getting it.

The researchers, of course, concluded that placebos are often just as effective as dangerous drugs. And it doesn’t even matter if you tell the patient that it’s a placebo! Amazing.

If someone does get addicted, they can go to drug rehab – although it’s important to get rehab asap because the risk of serious injury or death is very real. But if you can avoid taking addictive painkillers in the first place, then there’s virtually no risk of addiction or any of the other problems.

According to the official descriptions from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), methadone withdrawal symptoms are slower and easier to withstand. The theory is that when it’s taken orally once a day, it suppresses narcotic withdrawal for between 24 and 36 hours. When used as a “treatment” it gives time for the addict to eventually be weaned off drugs entirely. Or so goes the theory.

This is from the product information: “It is possible to maintain an addiction to methadone without harsh side effects . .  .” and “. . . many patients require continuous treatment, sometimes over a period of years.”  – Yes, folks… you read correctly. It says YEARS of methadone treatment!

If someone really wants to get help to end their addiction, why on earth would they take an addictive drug instead of using drug detox and drug rehab to handle it in just weeks, or a few months at most?
Here is another crazy fact: Methadone is given away for FREE to people on the street through methadone clinics. In many instances, people turn around and sell their methadone so they can continue to buy heroin or morphine. Methadone has been available as an illicit street drug for decades. The people on the street aren’t taking it to taper their use and eventually wean themselves off heroin or get through some form of drug rehab. They’re taking it to get stoned, and stay stoned. And by handing out free methadone we’re just keeping them addicted to opiates.

Then, there are the dangers involved in methadone use. A few years ago, the FDA issued a methadone public health advisory because it can suppress breathing and cause dangerous, and sometimes fatal, changes in heartbeat. In fact, there has been a huge rise in deaths due to methadone use – even when it’s consumed in low doses. Six percent of people carry a gene that makes methadone a life-threatening killer, according to the ONDCP.

Providing help to free addicts from the violence, crime and dwindling spiral that they will end up going down is a good thing. Handing out methadone and watching them return to continue to struggle is not. Handing out methadone to anyone for any reason is not a good thing! We have got to change our point of view, and demand some system changes that create the means for all addicts to fully recover and reclaim their lives through proper drug detox and drug rehab.

Here’s the stats: adverse events connected to methadone increased 1800% during the same time period as the number of prescriptions written increased by only 1300% (although it’s hard to justify the word ‘only’ when you’re talking about such an outrageous increase). The number of methadone-related deaths increased by 400% during that same time.

A new study shows that prescribing guidelines could be a major source of the problem. Check out New information points to safer methadone use for treatment of pain and addiction for more details.

Several coroners in the U.S. have written reports about the dangers of methadone – now we know more about it.  The study opens some doors, but we are not yet out of the woods. Do yourself a favor, stay away from methadone. If you’re trying to get off heroin, go to a good long-term residential addiction treatment center.

There are people who will try to convince you that heroin can’t be kicked. In fact, it can. I’ve done it myself, and know many others who’ve done the same. Don’t buy stories that methadone is the solution – a good drug rehab program is the solution, not more drugs.

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. 

The public in the area are suspicious – they don’t want a bunch of ’drug addicts’ around, and they don’t particularly care what drug they’re taking. Cooper’s response? ”I think people should keep in mind that people in methadone treatment programs, if they are successful, are no longer using drugs and don’t need to steal.”

I’m not sure what he means by ‘if they are successful,’ or they ‘are no longer using drugs.’ Does he mean that if they’re successful they’re no longer using heroin or methadone? If that’s not what he means then, yes, they are using drugs. They’re using methadone.

True, they don’t need to steal. They get their drugs from the clinic and it’s either free – not likely, since it’s a for-profit organization, or they’re relatively inexpensive.

Either way, it would be nice if we could expect something more than  they ‘don’t need to steal’ from a drug treatment facility. Sure, that’s a step in the right direction but how many are actually taking the next step – becoming completely drug-free?