AHS Views

Methadone is commonly given to heroin addicts (as well as morphine and other opioid users) to “treat” their dependence and withdrawal symptoms. It is prescribed to addicts every day, all over the US. It’s considered a way of helping people to get past their addiction and dependence to illegal street drugs.

The unfortunate thing about methadone is that it’s just as addicting, if not more so, than the heroin that they were shooting up, snorting or smoking. Once patients are given methadone, they just keep getting prescribed. This can go on for years and years – it’s called methadone maintenance.

What’s really fascinating to me is that it takes about a week to get through heroin detox. And, it can be done with other means, like vitamins, healthy diet, other alternative drugs that are less addicting and much easier to wean off of (in some cases), and the patient can fully rid their body of the powerful drug.

My question is, why on earth would you want to move to a different addictive drug, to become a slave to and dependent on, instead of a week of heroin detox? It has also been proven that methadone detox can be worse for patients than that of heroin. Would you really want to go stand in line for your methadone every day for years and years?

If I really take a look at this problem, it would appear that most people make the switch from the illegal drugs to methadone because it’s offered as “help” to addicts from the government. And, while I believe that the intentions are not horrible, the solution that has been put in place certainly is.

What if, and this is a big what if, the government used the resources that pay for methadone, to actually provide detox and addiction help facilities for addicts instead of drugging them? If you want to stop taking heroin, you go to treatment and properly go through the steps of drug detox and then drug rehab. What a concept, right? To actually get people fully off of drugs…

If you’ve ever found yourself looking for detox or rehab services, especially state funded programs, I’m sure you’ve experienced trouble locating an open bed. I personally hear the heartbreaking stories of families who don’t have enough money for private pay rehab, who have no options, on a daily basis. What’s available to the opioid addicts? Currently the answer is more drugs.

The City Council in Brewer, Maine, was supposed to make a decision on opening more methadone clinics. There are already nine of them, three of them in Bangor, just a mile from Brewer. They’ve put the decision off until January, largely because they’re concerned with social issues. They say the residents don’t want more drug addicts around and they think it promotes crime.

What they don’t seem to be really confronting is the number of people in the area who are addicted to heroin or other opiates and are consequently looking for methadone. Nor do they seem to be aware that getting people off heroin is much easier than getting them off methadone. They acknowledge that people need help, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Get them off heroin, not onto methadone.

There are some addiction help facilities that won’t even accept someone on methadone because getting off it is so difficult and takes so long.

If they want to curb the drug problem, they should be putting their efforts, and their money, into getting people off heroin – not getting them onto an alternative drug that’s even more of a problem.

And, by the way, if you or someone you care about is taking methadone and wants to get off it, there are some facilities that will take you and are successful. Contact Addiction Help Services for more info.

A few months ago a mother who was having a drug party at her house gave her two-year old some methadone to shut her up. The methadone killed her daughter. The judge suspended his 10-year sentence in favor of five years’ probation with the proviso that the woman get addiction help.

So, she’s in the treatment center but has now tested positive for alcohol and has broken a few other rules. Her probation hearing is coming up soon, her lawyer will ask for another chance at drug rehab.

Earlier, the woman complained that the process was moving too slowly. That it was holding her up.

Excuse me? You just killed your kid! That’s called murder. You’re lucky you’re not in jail for life.

Chances are not good for this woman as far as I can see. Now on top of everything else she has to face up to about herself, she also has to confront the fact that she murdered her daughter. That’s going to take a hefty dose of responsibility. But she can’t even keep herself from drinking alcohol in an addiction treatment center.

Most people who are addicted to drugs are really deserving of help. But they have to step up to the plate themselves as well. It doesn’t sound to me like she’s doing that.

It’s true, drug addiction is almost impossible to overcome on your own steam. You need help. But when killing your own kid doesn’t raise your necessity to really take advantage of the fact that you have addiction help available to you, I’d say you might be too far gone.

Maybe she feels she has nothing else to lose.

Not too long ago she asked for her kids to be taken away from her because she knew she wasn’t a good mother. That should have raised some red flags with someone enough to insist she get addiction help. If she didn’t want it, she probably wouldn’t have reported herself – like a criminal who wants to get caught.

Not only didn’t she get help, she was also unable to arrange for help for her daughter. Now her daughter’s dead.

What a mess.

Do you know anyone that seems to be heading in that direction? Get them some addiction help services now. And make sure they go to a center that’s not set up to enable alcohol to get into the place.

Okay, so there are a lot of people out there who depend on methadone as a way to get through life. People who just can’t shake their addiction to opiates no matter how many times they go through various forms of drug rehab – if I’d tried drug rehab 17 times, I guess I’d consider it impossible to quit heroin, too – and people who live in chronic pain so severe that they can’t enjoy life in the slightest.

But those aren’t usually the people who are dying from methadone. Check into the story of Tim Strews, a former radio personality who, although he hopes to go back to his job, is also considering becoming a drug counselor so he can give others the addiction help he got that finally got him off methadone.

It was a long haul for him. He was in residential treatment for more than four months, and continued as an out-patient when he left.

Methadone is one of the most difficult drugs to kick. Worse than even the most seriously addictive drugs like heroin.

It’s also one of the trickiest drugs to control. It stays in the system for up to 10 times longer than it provides pain relief – which motivates the person taking it to take more or to take other painkillers with it. But that can cause the methadone to build up to toxic levels, which can kill you without any warning that there’s a problem.

Strews’ experience change his attitude towards people on drugs. He used to be pretty unsympathetic. How he sees that it’s almost impossible to stop taking drugs without help.

Badgering won’t do any good. Drug addicts need help. Contact Addiction Help Services to find an addiction treatment center that’s suitable for your problem and resources.

Other countries often follow what happens in the U.S. I was raised in Canada, I was always told that we were 10 years behind the U.S. In some ways, that’s a blessing. As the people in the Czech Republic are soon to find out – they’re going to get methadone to “treat” heroin addicts.

We’re going to export yet another unsuccessful ‘treatment – one that gets heroin addicts addicted to another drug instead of helping them get off drugs altogether.

There are plenty of addiction help programs that actually get people off drugs successfully. Why aren’t we exporting them?

But that’s really the way America works these days. Big Pharma makes sure of it. Got a problem, take a drug. Got a drug problem, take another drug.

The worst thing about this is that it actually looks like a solution. And when you have a solution to a problem, you stop looking for one. Which means that, just like in America, people all over the Czech Republic will be addicted to methadone and actually think they don’t have a drug problem. And many of the officials, doctors, and other professionals will think the same.

If treatment options aren’t working, find out what’s wrong with them and fix it.  Don’t just give up and park the person on another drug.

Oh, I know this post will bring a lot of methadone addicts out of the woodwork to tell me what an ignorant idiot I am.  And some people who will write in really do need to be on methadone – they’ve tried everything else, or their living in chronic pain.

But, the vast majority do not need it.

If you suspect you may be one of them, and would like to live your life without having to make a trip to the methadone clinic every day, contact addiction help services to find out more about your options.

I’ve written a lot of blogs in the past about the dangers of methadone. Check out yesterday’s New York Times article about methadone-related deaths and you’ll find out more about the problem. And why people who are already taking other drugs or drinking alcohol, or could possibly do either, need to get addiction help before they ever do anything like take methdone or other opiate painkillers.

Methadone is dangerous enough all by itself, but when you combine it with other drugs or alcohol, you’re really taking a very big risk.

Imagine this scenario – you drink, or take drugs that aren’t really necessary for your survival. They’re not saving your life, they’re just enabling you to escape whatever’s bothering you. Tranquilizers, sedatives, etc. You could probably use addiction help, but you’re not getting it.

Then you’re in an accident or have an unexpected illness. The doctor has to give you prescription painkillers. But you’re also taking other drugs. Or drinking. Now you have to take a drug that could kill you.

Do you really want to be in that position? Do you want someone you care about to be in that position? No. So, get some addiction help now. Life is the school of hard knocks. To get through it, you need to be in good shape. And the better you’re doing mentally, emotionally and physically, the greater your chances are to be happy and make life what you want it to be. Don’t take drugs – become more able to handle your problems.

And the first problem you can handle is your addiction to or dependence on drugs. Start with drug addiction help services.

After writing yesterday’s blog on methadone treatment I received a blog from a woman who was on heroin for 10 years until a methadone treatment clinic opened in her town. From her viewpoint, methadone saved her life. Fair enough. I don’t know what addiction help she tried during those 10 years but, obviously, whatever it was didn’t work for her. So, she’s now a methadone advocate.

By the way, she asked if I’d ever been addicted to heroin. Yes, I have been. And I also tried methadone to get off it. I didn’t like it. I quit methadone, and I quit heroin.  And I know plenty of others who’ve done the same.

The fact is, lots of people have gotten off heroin without methadone treatment. If someone prefers to continue to take an addictive opiate drug – i.e. methadone – that’s up to them. But some people would prefer to be drug free. So, before they make the choice of methadone treatment, they should be informed that being drug free is an option. That there are many people who’ve gotten off heroin and that it can be done with the right addiction help services.

Just because some people didn’t do it doesn’t mean they couldn’t have if they’d gotten the type of addiction help they really needed. And just because some people didn’t get the addiction help they needed, doesn’t mean others should be denied that same help.

If someone else reading this would like to get off methadone or is considering going on it, do yourself a favor and find out about addiction help services that could help you live drug free.

The recent death of a 16-year-old girl provides an excellent example of why people have to be warned about the dangers of methadone: Two girls living at a facility for teen substance abuser stole methadone from an employee. Not getting high as they had obviously expected to, the girls continued to take more methadone throughout the night, eventually fell into a coma, and one died. Obviously, both girls were in need of addiction help and neither should have been exposed to any drugs.

Karla Ramirez, the aunt of the girl who is in recovery, explained, ”When the effects didn’t hit right away, they just kept taking more pills. They had no idea what they were dealing with.”

And that pretty much sums up the methadone problem – people just don’t know what they’re dealing with. It’s a tricky drug. You don’t feel the usual effects you would expect from an opiate, other than having it kill pain, and, consequently, either take more methadone or take another drug on top of it. This results in overdose and, sometimes, death. They go to sleep and never wake up.

Another unfortunate result of this incident is that the home where this occured will no longer have people who need addiction help services referred there by officials in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, and another group home was also cut off. How many people won’t be able to get the addiction help they need due to the criminal neglect of one employee?

The facility is no longer  

T, but rather than getting the help they need

While we may think being dependant on a drug isn’t the best way to go through life, we’re not alone. Many people dependent on drugs, including people on MRT, agree with that. We do recognize that some people have simply run out of options and that without methadone or some other drug they wouldn’t be able to get through a day. We’ve discussed that in several blogs and made it clear that those are not the people we’re concerned about and that the blogs regarding methadone are not directed to them. We never get comments on those blogs, by the way. But if we relay any factual information about the number of methadone-related deaths, or about a specific person who died, or about someone needing addiction help to get off it, we’re immediately inundated with people defending it and telling us to get our facts straight.

Excuse me – we’ve been involved in the field of drug rehab for a long time. We’ve helped thousands of people get off drugs – including heroin. Some of the people writing these comments are former heroin addicts who couldn’t stop taking it and turned to methadone instead. Exactly what qualifies that person as an expert in drug rehab?

The fact is, methadone is being abused all over the U.S. – and in other countries. The fact is, there are more methadone-related deaths than there are deaths related to heroin. The fact is, some of the people who die are kids. And, some of them get the methadone from parents who are on MRT. I wrote a blog some time ago about a toddler who picked up a methadone pill from the floor, ate it, and died. The pill had gotten buried in the couch and shaken out when the cushions were straightened. It fell on the floor without the parents noticing. Now their kid is dead. One of his parents was on MRT. And that’s not an isolated incident.
 
What would you have us do? Ignore the fact that it’s a dangerous drug and never say anything about it just in case we offend someone? Do you want us to play down the dangers of methadone so you don’t feel bad – so you don’t feel ‘attacked’ because you’re taking it? Well, sorry, if that’s what you want, it’s not going to happen. Methadone might not be killing you, but it has killed a lot of other people. We’re going to keep telling people about it. And we hope that by doing so, we’ll save some lives.

Your comments, on the other hand, that justify and defend methadone, that make it look acceptable, that suggest taking methadone is no different than a diabetic taking insulin to prevent themselves from suddenly going into a coma they may never come out of, may well make the drug seem safer than it is. And that could kill someone. Maybe you should think about that instead of being riveted on defending yourself. You want to take methadone? Fine. You need to take methadone? That’s understood. But don’t make it look like it’s a good thing. It’s not. And anyone who thinks there might be a chance in hell of getting off it should look into getting the addiction help services that might allow them to live drug free. Obviously, this does not apply to those of you who’ve already gone to 17 addiction help facilities to no avail, unless you really want to give it another shot, or to those of you who are coping with severe chronic pain.

Kay Sanford of the North Carolina Depatment of Health said “methadone may be the most underrated problem in drug abuse in the country today.” And the need for addiction help services for methadone abuse is more prevalent then ever.

OxyContin is so dangerous that many doctors have started prescribing methadone as an alternative painkiller. But kids are getting it from their parents’ medicine cabinets, and its finding it’s way to the street.

Methadone used to be given to heroin addicts who couldn’t stop using heroin. Now it’s being given to people who can’t stop OxyContin. It’s unfortunate that these people aren’t getting the addiction help they need to get off drugs instead of being given methadone as a substitute.

Like all prescriptions drugs, Methadone is dangerous. If not taken correctly, it can kill you. Caleb Bevil from Raleigh, North Carolina, died from a methadone overdose last Saturday at only 12 years old. My heart goes out to his family. It’s a real tragedy for both them and the community.

In Cleveland County, North Carolina, Lt. Joel Shores lists methadone, along with Xanax and hydrocodone, as one of the many prescription drugs he’s seeing on the streets.

In New Hampshire, methadone abuse is being described as a “troubling trend”.

Deaths attributed to methadone and other prescription drugs have quadrupled since 2002. If you need addiction help for methadone, or any prescription drug, please find out how to get it.