What is Methadone Maintenance?
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What is Methadone Maintenance?

Methadone Maintenance ClinicWhat is methadone maintenance? Methadone maintenance has been used for more than 30 years to “treat” opioid addiction. Properly prescribed methadone is not intoxicating or sedating, and its effects do not interfere with ordinary activities such as driving a car. The medication is taken orally and it suppresses narcotic withdrawal for 24 to 36 hours. Patients are able to perceive pain and have emotional reactions. Most important, methadone relieves the craving associated with heroin addiction; craving is a major reason for relapse. Among methadone patients, it has been found that normal street doses of heroin are ineffective at producing euphoria, thus making the use of heroin more easily extinguishable.

Let’s continue to explore the question, what is methadone maintenance? Methadone's effects last four to six times as long as those of heroin, so people in treatment need to take it only once a day. Combined with behavioral therapies or counseling and other supportive services, methadone enables patients to stop using heroin (and other opiates) and return to more stable and productive lives. Methadone dosages must be carefully monitored in patients who are receiving antiviral therapy for HIV infection, to avoid potential medication interactions.

Here are some interesting points regarding the question, what is methadone maintenance? Patients become as physically dependent on methadone as they were to heroin or other opiates (such as OxyContin or Vicodin) and suffer difficult withdrawal when finally trying to detox of this medication. Some doctors in the field of addiction recovery feel that methadone is medically safe even when used continuously for 10 years or more! Methadone maintenance is not a cure for opiate addiction. Truly, the addict is replacing one drug addiction for another. The replacement medication (methadone) is taken orally and is rapidly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, appearing in the blood’s plasma within thirty minutes of being ingested. Methadone is also widely distributed to body tissues where it is stored and then released into the plasma. This combination of storage and release keeps the patient comfortable, free from craving, and feeling stable.

Still looking for more information on the question, what is methadone maintenance? Methadone kills more than heroin each year. Heroin killed 28 people in Dublin last year while Methadone took 31 lives. This poses the question, is the cure worse than the addict’s heroin addiction?

The Dublin City Coroner has released statistics on last year's drug deaths that have opponents to methadone crying for change. In the last 12 months, heroin caused 14 deaths and contributed to the deaths of 14 others. Methadone, a legal drug used therapeutically for heroin addicts, caused the death of 12 patients, and contributed to the deaths of an additional 19.

What is methadone maintenance? Methadone can be given to heroin addicts, allowing them to switch painlessly from an intoxicating and dangerous addiction to heroin, to a controlled and non intoxicating addiction to methadone. Problematically, because methadone stays active within the body for longer than does heroin, the eventual withdrawal from methadone exceeds heroin in its severity and duration.

Critics fault a system that rewards Irish doctors financially for referrals into methadone clinics. Public health officials deny any wrongdoing and call such allegations absurd. The Public Health (HSE) defends Methadone Maintenance as a safe and effective therapy for heroin addicts, and funds programming in accordance with its belief in the efficacy of methadone maintenance. There are 9200 Dubliners on Methadone, and only 23 funded detoxification treatment beds.

Mel MacGiobuin, Director of the North Inner City Local Drugs Taskforce, explains that in his experience a typical methadone patient takes between 8 and 9 years to detox off of methadone successfully. He speculates that due to Dublin's reliance on drug substitution programs over therapy and treatment, the city could face real problems should another form of drug become widely used.


What is Methadone Maintenance?
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Heroin Facts

  • Current estimates suggest that nearly 600,000 people need treatment for heroin addiction. Data from the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse suggests an increase in purity is partly responsible for 75 percent of new heroin-addicts who are snorting and smoking, not injecting, the opiate. In 1991 that number was 46 percent.
  • Demographics: Numerically, heroin isn't a huge problem -- unless, of course, it happens to affect you, which can make it seem huge. According to a 2005 survey, more than 3.5 million Americans have tried heroin, with 379,000 reporting use during the previous 12 months. During the same year, heroin figured into 164,572 U.S. emergency-room admissions.
  • During 1990, Americans consumed 13.6 metric tons of heroin. Current estimates of heroin consumption remain relatively unchanged and show that 13.3 metric tons of heroin were consumed in 2000. Heroin (diacetylmorphine) was developed an analgesic alternative to morphine, and was initially marketed as a less addictive substitute to other opiate pain relievers. At the turn of the 19th century, some doctors and pharmacists were giving heroin as cure to those with morphine addictions.
  • Heroin abuse is a serious problem in America. Recent studies suggest a shift from injecting heroin to snorting or smoking because of increased purity and the misconception that these forms of use will not lead to addiction. Heroin abuse is associated with serious health conditions, including fatal overdose, spontaneous abortion, collapsed veins, and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.
  • Heroin also creates a powerful feeling of euphoria and pleasurable well being. Regular heroin use almost invariable leads to compulsive heroin addiction, in which attaining a heroin high becomes the central focus of life. Heroin also works as a potent analgesic, and people on heroin will feel little pain. A heroin high lasts typically from four to six hours, and most heroin addicts use the drug three or four times a day.
  • Heroin ceases to produce feelings of pleasure in users who develop tolerance; instead, these users must continue taking the drug simply to feel normal. Heroin creates an intense feeling of euphoria (a rush) followed by hours of serene and drowsy well being. Heroin impairs mental function and automatic bodily processes such as breathing.