What are the downsides to using methadone for addiction treatment?
June 4, 2009 by Addiction and Substance Abuse Tips
Filed under More Addiction Answers
Can you answer cinthia cb’s question about Addiction?:
I have a friend who has finally decided to get herself treated for her heroin addiction. I’ve heard a lot of good things about buprenorphine as a detox option, but I know that a lot of people are still banking on methadone as a good way of detoxing. I just want to know the disadvantages of using methadone so that I can warn my friend as well as help her in making a decision.
Drug Detox Programs
I have a friend who has finally decided to get herself treated for her heroin addiction. I’ve heard a lot of good things about buprenorphine as a detox option, but I know that a lot of people are still banking on methadone as a good way of detoxing. I just want to know the disadvantages of using methadone so that I can warn my friend as well as help her in making a decision.
Drug Detox Programs
Addiction Feedback: Methadone does help opiate dependent persons to stop abusing drugs by decreasing cravings and withdrawal symptoms. However, using methadone does have its own disadvantages. Due to the fact that methadone can only be administered in licensed methadone treatment clinics, the patients must deal with making daily trips to a methadone clinic. These clinics are mostly located in or near urban centers, so driving long distances happens to be part of the daily routine of patients in rural areas. Another disadvantage to using methadone is the fact that it can also lead to addiction. Methadone abuse is increasing in the Northeast region, and can result to overdose deaths.
Addiction Feedback: it is also very addicting
Addiction Feedback: It’s still addicitive and it’s still poisonous.
That’s like subsituting carbohydrates for fats in the same calorie amounts. Sure carbohydrates themselves do not produce fatty cells to clump in the arterial walls, but the fact that if you don’t burn those carbohydrates, your body stores them into fat, which by the way…clump in the artierial walls. See, hardly a difference.
Your friend needs to change her way of thinking, because that’s the real addiction. The physcial addiction can be overcome in 3 days (the worst physical symptoms subside by the 3rd day) The mental addiction and the social addiction is really where heroine addicts bite the bullet. It’s really harder to restructure your ENTIRE life and social circle.