Methadone Clinic: Methadone & Heroin Facts

Question: Your opinion on methadone clinics?

(Posted by: blondie on 2011-09-16 11:47:05)

Found out my brother has been using heroin, his mom is taking him to a methadone clinic soon, personally i feel like methadone is just as bad a heroin.... opinions please. I think he needs to just admit himself to the hospital and just detox...

Posted by: peacefreak2000 on 2011-09-16, 11:54:05

Methadone is bad and addictive...but depending how much herion he took, his body could shutdown if taken off cold turkey.

Posted by: J Miller on 2011-09-17, 03:24:26

Well, you're clearly not very knowledgeable about methadone. Methadone is by no means as bad as heroin, or bad at all. It's a medication used to treat opiate addiction. It is in the same family of drugs as heroin but the two drugs are very, very different. As an example the drug Imodium, used for diarrhea, is also an opiate, in the same family as heroin and methadone, but as I'm sure you know it has little in common with heroin. Just admitting a heroin addict to a hospital for detox doesn't work at all. It's a common misconception that addicts keep using because of the physical symptoms felt when the drug is stopped. That's a small part of the problem. The physical withdrawal symptoms are caused by a dependence to the drug. Dependence is not the same as addiction as many people think. Addiction is a brain disorder that causes an addict to crave the drug, obsess over the drug and use it compulsively. It's a compulsion that the addict can't control. It's not that different from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) where the person will have compulsions like washing their hands every hour or tapping on things all over the place. It's pretty much an involuntary action. With a heroin addict the compulsion remains the same even when the drug is no longer in the body and withdrawal symptoms are over. Detoxing will not help at all. It will help for a person who is only physically dependent on opiates, such as a person who has been taking it for pain for a longer period of time, but it doesn't work for people with actual addiction. Studies show that over 95% of addicts relapse after being detoxed. The majority of people that seek help at a methadone clinic have detoxed on several occasions. Another problem with opiate abuse is that after some time the brain stops making the body's natural opiates called endorphins. When a person doesn't have enough endorphins he will start suffering from severe depression, become over sensitive to pain and just feel miserable in general. These people need artificial endorphins in order to function and methadone is an artificial endorphin. Sometimes the brain starts making endorphins again but for people who have been using for a long time the damage is permanent and they will need artificial endorphins for a long time, sometimes for life. There are a lot of people who argue that methadone is just as addictive as heroin and that therefore addicts are just trading one drug for another. But this just shows a lack of understanding of what addiction is and how methadone works. As I mentioned above addiction is a brain disorder. A physical need for the drug is dependence, not addiction. A person who takes methadone daily will become dependent on it and will get withdrawal symptoms if it's stopped abruptly but he is not addicted to the methadone. Being dependent on a medication is not ideal but it's a small price to pay to live a normal life free of the compulsion to use drugs. Many people with other diseases are also dependent on their medications. For example people who live with chronic pain and take methadone or other opiates like vicodin are also dependent on their medication but that does not mean that they are addicts. They don't have a compulsion to use drugs like an addict does. Many other medications, like anti-depressants, also cause a physical dependency. Some claim that methadone is bad because it's harder to get off than heroin. That's not really true. The withdrawal symptoms one gets when stopping methadone are milder than they are for heroin and drugs like oxycontin but it lasts a lot longer. In that sense it would be harder to get off methadone but this is not an issue for people who start methadone treatment at a clinic. Withdrawal only happens when the medication is stopped cold turkey. But if the patient tapers the medication little by little he can get off without having any uncomfortable symptoms. So in that sense it's not really hard at all to get off methadone. Methadone is THE most effective treatment method for opiate addiction available. If someone gets the correct treatment it works very well. The patient does not get high off methadone, as some people claim. He only feels normal and the methadone stabilizes the brain so that the addict no longer has the obsession and compulsion to use drugs. Because of this he can start living a normal life and become a responsible, productive citizen. It doesn't work for everyone but it does work for over 70% which is much better than a detox that works in only 1-5% of cases. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing that has saved countless lives and given people their lives back. I am a recovering addict who have not touched a drug in almost 8 years thanks to methadone. I have tried everything else but nothing has worked like methadone treatment did. I now live a normal life. I work and go to school and live like everybody else. WIthout it I would most likely have been dead by now.