It’s the new year, and it’s time to start taking drug rehab, for yourself or someone you care about, into consideration. Do you really want to go through another year of hell living with drugs?

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.

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Recent research into the drug scene in New York City shows that prescription drugs are the #2 drugs of abuse and addiction. Second only to marijuana. And that’s only the people who are taking them without a prescription.

It is amazing what has happened with prescription drugs. When first developed they saved lives – and that was their purpose. Now they’ve turned into a multi-billion dollar industry – one of, if not the most profitable industry on the planet and one of the most dangerous. They’ve turned into public enemy #1.

They are ruining people’s lives. People are dying from them, going to jail because of them, having their lives and families torn apart, filling up drug rehab facilities.

Prescription drugs are not just for saving lives anymore; they are now taken for everything from pain – much of which could be addressed with drug-free therapies like chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, lifestyle changes, and so on – to ‘treating’ anxiety, depression, fidgeting in class and just about every other problem. All problems that used to be considered part of every day life and are now labeled as mental illness – needing treatment with drugs.

In fact, so many of our emotions and mental states are now categorized as mental illness that you’d be hard-pressed to not find yourself, your family members or friends falling into at least one of the current mental illness categories.

Pharmaceutical companies pay out billions of dollars in fines for false and illegal advertising and marketing, for injuries and deaths – but, for them, it’s all just part of doing business. They are a powerful industry. Any other industry with business practices that unethical and products or services that created that much damage would have been stopped long ago.

Despite these disasters, the industry is looking for even more customers – pushing for legislation for ‘screening’ to make sure that those with a ‘potential’ for ‘mental illness’ are drugged as a preventative measure. It has even been suggested that children be screened before they are born!

Many of the most commonly taken drugs are highly addictive.  OxyContin addiction, addiction to oxycodone, hydrocodone, Fentanyl, Vicodin, Percocet, Xanax, Valium, and others – are highly addictive. And we now have a prescription drug-addicted society. A problem far worse than street drugs ever were.

These are now the drugs that you “just say NO” to.

Has someone in your family fallen prey to prescription drugs? Are they taking prescription drugs for something other than life-saving purposes and getting addicted to them? Find a good drug rehab program to get help. You may not be able to stop the nationwide epidemic, but you can stop prescription drugs from ruining your life and the lives of your family and friends.

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If you know someone who is on heroin, methadone, other opiates – even prescription painkillers – you need to know this.

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.

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