A recovery community since 1985, Pat Moore Foundation is considered a leader in alcohol and drug addiction treatment. For more than 25 years we have seen first-hand the destructiveness of alcohol and drug addiction to a person and his or her family, so we’ve created an information guide to help people understand the effects and influences abuses to prescription drugs, heroin, and other drugs have on them and their surrounding environment. This service is provided for anyone seeking helpful and insightful information on addiction and abuse.
Decline of Methadone
The general public is largely uninformed about the dangers of methadone. Most people only know it as a treatment for heroin addiction. Over the past 30 to 40 years, methadone treatment has enjoyed a positive reputation because it has been much preferred over the alternative—heroin.
Recent years have caused the drug treatment and medical community to reevaluate the use of methadone both as a drug treatment tool and for pain management. Methadone withdrawal treatment has long been the method of choice to help keep heroin users in treatment. By preventing the sometimes unbearable withdrawal symptoms, methadone has been an integral part of heroin detoxification and detoxification from other opiods like morphine. The unfortunate side effect of this treatment, however, is methadone addiction. Most experts have been willing to accept this side effect because there was no alternative.
Within the last decade, however, a new drug to treat withdrawal symptoms from opiate detoxification has emerged. The FDA-approved buprenorphine in 2002 as an alternative to methadone detoxification. Buprenorphine also eliminates withdrawal symptoms, but does not pose the same addiction risk as methadone. Sold primarily as Suboxone, buprenorphine also does not have the same potential for abuse as methadone.
Methadone misuse and abuse is on the rise. As prescriptions for methadone for pain management increase, so has the supply of methadone on the black market. As a direct result, methadone-related deaths have also increased. As more experts begin to recognize the dangers of methadone, it is likely that methadone detox treatment and methadone pain prescriptions will decline.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/us/17methadone.html
Click here for the next part in the series, “Methadone and OxyContin.” Click here to return to the first part in the series, “Introduction to Methadone.”
Pat Moore Foundation’s drug & alcohol detox and alcohol & drug addiction treatment programs are licensed and certified by The State of California. We provide non-medical and medically managed detoxification (using Suboxone, Subutex, and Buprenorphine when appropriate) and primary residential treatment. Our individual homes are on a unique co-ed campus where we offer gender specific treatment. We are located in Costa Mesa, in Orange County, Southern California, close to Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, and only an hour’s drive from Los Angeles and San Diego. To speak with a counselor, please call us 24-hours at (888) 426-6086 or if you’d like us to contact you, send a confidential message online by filling out our online form.
Note: All medical services are administered by medical professionals, which are facilitated and operated solely under the jurisdiction of a separate medical corporation.