Methadone and Methadone Clinics

Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT): Pros and cons

How is it possible to detoxify someone from their addiction to one substance by replacing their drug of choice with another narcotic? That is the goal of methadone treatment and methadone clinics. Heroin is considered one of the most powerfully physically addictive drugs used today. The goal of Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) is to "to reduce and even eliminate heroin use among addicts by stabilizing them on methadone for as long as is necessary to help them avoid returning to previous patterns of drug use" (MMT, 2009, Drug Policy Alliance). Methadone is an opiate like heroin, and can be addictive as well, but it does not bestow the powerful, immediate euphoric 'high' of heroin. In theory it reduces the addict's psychological dependence on heroin, while blunting intense physical pain of heroin withdrawal. According to the Treatment Outcome Prospective Study (TOPS) with methadone "patients drastically reduced their heroin use while in treatment, with less than 10% using heroin weekly or daily after just three months in treatment" (MMT, 2009, Drug Policy Alliance). In the U.S. methadone is limited to clinic distribution, although in other nations, physicians may prescribe it to addicts.

But despite this medicinal veneer, methadone is "increasingly being abused by recreational drug users and is causing an alarming increase in overdoses and deaths" (Belluck 2003). Heroin and prescription opium abusers are turning to methadone often with alcohol or other drugs. They buy the drug illegally on the street -- often it is sold by addicts who have been able to obtain a large supply, though fair or foul means. This suggests that without appropriate controls upon methadone's distribution, and without appropriate counseling, methadone is no panacea to the dilemma of heroin addiction. Heroin has a psychological and a physiological component, and merely addressing one without treating the other can simply replace one deadly addiction with one slightly less damaging one. Methadone is not without its addictive potential and does not turn a drug addict into a nonuser.

Works Cited

Belluck, Pam, (9 February 2003) Methadone Suddenly Grows as a Killer Drug. New York Times

Retrieved May 26, 2009 at http://www.opioids.com/methadone/scarestory.html

Methadone Maintenance Treatment. (2009). Drug Policy Alliance. Retrieved May 26, 2009 at http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/research/methadone.cfm