I have never been a big fan of methadone. In drug rehab it may be useful to get clients off of opiates, however even with that said there are probably better drugs to do that with. The reason I don’t like methadone as a treatment modality is two fold. Number one is the length of a detox required. If fact, most times you really can not detox off of methadone. It is much more of a methadone taper. If someone is taking 100 mg per day it would take 5 to 6 months to taper down to zero useage. Therefore if someone is entering a three month drug rehab residential program, if they are taking over 60 mg per day it will be difficult to be drug free after they are complete. Many clients just get too uncomfortable dropping more than 5 mg per week.

The other problem is that with many of the rules in place about prescribing and dispensing methadone. Clients are sometimes virtual prisoners while on methadone. Leaving for a week long holiday may be impossible. Many programs will dispense only three day’s worth of methadone when leaving town. So people can only leave their area for a maximum of a long weekend.

If you are on methadone or are considering it as a treatment choice, you can always use good information and help. Before you enter a drug rehab program you may want to work on getting your dose down to the 50 to 60 mg per day range. Regardless check out the site www.methadone.org. It might help you figure out if methadone is a good option for you.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 10:48 am and is filed under Drug Rehab. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.