Myths About Methadone by Emmett Velten-6

 

Myth #7

METHADONE DOES NO GOOD

A
former methadone patient, now a successful mother and pre-med
student with several clean and sober years, was asked to comment on the
idea that methadone does no good.4 
She had been on methadone several times. 
The only thing being on methadone the first time did for
me, she said, was save my life.

Exposure
to diseases, attack on the street, overdose, and so forth are all
reduced substantially for most patients on methadone. 
They have a better chance to stay alive. 
In their pursuit of the wickedness of being on something,
some critics of methadone seem to forget the human angle. 
The death rate, arrest rate, illness rate of addicts drops
substantially when they enroll in methadone treatment. 
Their legitimate employment rate, the taxes they pay, and their
immune system functioning, all rise. 
These factors are important and would be important even if
methadone treatment were less effective than outpatient drug-free
treatment, but such is not the case.

In
the second edition of his monumental text on heroin addiction, Jerome
Platt said,

Based
on predictors of outcome using a multiple discriminant analysis
approach, outcomes for methadone maintenance and treatment communities
exceeded expectation, the drug free programs did more poorly than
expected…

Sells,
the chief DARP researcher concluded that methadone maintenance as well
as therapeutic community approaches have demonstrated their worth for
narcotics treatment, while outpatient drug-free programs are seen as
mainly useful for youthful nonopioid and polydrug users (Sells &
Simpson 1980).

Myth
#8

METHADONE CAUSES PATIENTS

TO TURN TO ALCOHOL

The
idea in this myth is that there is a special tendency for methadone
patients to turn to alcohol

because
they are on methadone.  The
DARP studies indicated that the amounts of alcohol consumed by methadone
maintenance patients and therapeutic community and outpatient drug-free
clients at the beginning of treatment were almost identical. 
At earlier follow-ups after treatment, the amounts of alcohol

reported
consumed has increased considerably. 
These increases were almost identical for each of the three
treatment modalities.  Therefore,
it can be concluded that methadone treatment has no special relationship
to peoples propensity to increase their alcohol intake.

At
12-year follow-up, it was concluded that the increases in alcohol
consumption reported above had leveled off within a few years of
completion of treatment.  It
has been found in the DARP follow-ups, including the 12-year follow-up,
that as time passes a larger and larger percentage of the original
subject group remained free of illicit drug use. 
Therefore, it appears that there is no progressive tendency to
substitute alcohol for heroin.  some,
but only some, patients may so substitute, or at any rate increase
alcohol consumption.

Myth
#9

METHADONE HURTS YOUR HEALTH

There
have been well over 2,000,000 patient years on methadone, and thousands
of babies have been born to mothers on methadone. 
The health status of patients on methadone has probably been
studied with greater frequency and depth than that of any other
medication.

Mary
Jeanne Kreek, M.D. Senior Research Associate and Physician, Department
of biology of Addictive Disease of The Rockefeller University, concluded
as follows in her encyclopedic review of the literature (Kreek, 1983).

The
most important medical consequence of chronic methadone treatment, in
fact, is the marked improvement in general health and nutritional status
observed in patients as compared with their status at time of admission
to treatment.  Most medical
complications observed in methadone maintenance patients are either
related to ongoing preexisting chronic disease, especially chronic liver
disease, the onset of which occurred prior to entry into methadone
treatment, or to coexisting new diseases or illnesses or to ongoing
polydrug or alcohol use.  Clearly the most common cause of serious medical
complications in methadone-maintained patients both during the methadone
maintenance treatment and also during and following withdrawal is
chronic alcohol abuse.

4.
           
The use of clean is no longer acceptable and another example of
the use of stigmatizing language. A diabetic
that followed medical prescriptions is not referred to as clean. And
this type of language infers that individuals displaying symptoms of
addiction are dirty.