[Dayman]

Methadone has a poor record of getting people off of narcotics. Trading one drug for another isn’t a recipe for success. Total detox then a change of environment/friends when the narcotic addict is clean is a much more sucessful option.

[cripplecreek]

Seems to me that its more of a recipe for funneling tax dollars to methadone producers.

[DBCJR]

Your observation runs counter to SAMHSA CSAT empirical data. Traditional treatment for opioid addicts, non-medication assisted, has success rates ranging 6-8%. Medication assisted treatment has rates over 70%.

[Mikey_1962]

The problem with Methadone is the extremely long half-life and active metabolites.

[bearsgirl90]

Trading one drug for another isn’t a recipe for success.

Agree 100%. I know someone that has been taking cyboxin for well over a year to "get her off of" hydros & opiates. She now says the cyboxin isn't working anymore and needs her dr. to prescribe something else.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Lots of people make huge amounts of money off methadone. Though you wouldn’t think it to look at the squalor of an inner city methadone clinic, the money is all behind the scenes and at a much higher level.

And those who make the money lobby hard to keep it that way.

A system that was tried in Europe showed great promise, but was effectively killed. It was a combination of three drugs. The first would put a junkie into a coma for four days. The second would remove the heroin from their system. And the third would block the effect of heroin in their body, so they would get nothing from injecting it.

The end result was that the junkie would go through withdrawl while unconscious, wake up clean, and have enough of the blocking agent in their blood to last them for a month. Then, with counseling, and once a month getting a shot of blocking agent for five more months, the chance of them going back to heroin was significantly reduced. And since the blocking agent is not particularly expensive, if they wanted to continue with it longer, they could.

Because of the debilitated condition of many junkies, and the inherent risk of being put into an artificial coma, there was as high as a 1% risk of death, though in practice much less. This was just a little more than the number of junkies who would typically die in a six months time frame no matter what.

Though such a relatively high rate of death, compared to other procedures, was quite high, this was suitable to bar the procedure from even being tested in the US.