HealthAddictions

If someone you know is taking methadone for any reason – pain management or addiction treatment are the usual reasons – tell them they’re playing Russian roulette with their life. Pain can be managed with safer drugs, and addiction is not solved by another addictive drug, but by drug rehab – which won’t unexpectedly kill you.Deaths from methadone overdoses and drug interactions are rising faster than any other prescription narcotic, including OxyContin, Vicodin and morphine, says the National Drug Intelligence Center (CDIC) in a new report. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says methadone overdoses killed 3,849 people in 2004, a 390% increase over 1999. More recent data from state health departments show the trend is continuing, with teens and young adults ages 15 to 24 suffering the highest methadone overdose rates.The amount of methadone dispensed by doctors increased 715% from 2001 to 2006, the CDIC report said. But the Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory about methadone in November 2006 after the alarming trends in abuse and death became known.The problem with methadone is that it metabolizes slowly and can stay in the body for more than a day. Without careful dosing, methadone can build to toxic levels. Any interaction with another drug that also depresses the system can quickly lead to respiratory and heart failure and death.Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said prescription drugs have surpassed marijuana as the drug of choice for new users. “The larger story is the widespread abuse of prescription painkillers in America,” Riley said. “The abuse and misuse of prescription drugs is far more dangerous and far more widespread than most Americans realize.”Methadone has been prescribed since the 1940s as a pain reliever. More recently, it’s begun to be prescribed more often because of the problems associated with OxyContin. Part of methadone’s popularity was that it also cost less than other opioid pain medicines such as OxyContin that are also derived from opium. Instead of a solution, however methadone is now the new problem, a killer drug just like OxyContin.Widely used to alleviate withdrawal symptoms and block the cravings of heroin addiction, methadone often takes precedence over proper drug rehab programs. And apparently it’s also cheaper for local and state governments to hand out methadone than provide proper drug rehab for heroin addicts.Meanwhile, thousands of addicts are patrolling the streets looking for heroin or other opiates, and settling for illicit methadone if they can’t get what they’re looking for. Most illicit methadone is obtained from other junkies who, instead of having their addictions treated in drug rehab, live day to day by sometimes selling or trading their methadone handouts.The exact number of people on methadone for ‘treatment’ of addictions to opiates is unknown, but is certainly in the tens of thousands – and all of them could have a chance to be drug free if they opted for drug rehab instead of a secondary addiction. Instead, hundreds of addicts are dying from methadone overdoses and drug interactions. Many thousands more are receiving methadone prescriptions for pain, risking opiate addiction and the need for drug rehab, if not a premature death.The idea that methadone is a good idea because it keeps addicts off heroin is as far from drug rehab as you can get. Drug rehab is just what the name says – rehabilitation – which is defined as “treatment, therapy, healing, remedy, or cure.” Keeping anyone addicted to any drug cannot be considered a healing remedy or cure. Rehabilitation, by its very definition, means getting off drugs for good, and the way to do that is through a real, honest drug rehab program.

If you or someone you love suffers from drug dependence or addiction, you need to know that it is not an ‘incurable brain disease’. Countless thousands of people recover their health and achieve drug-free lives every year, whether their problems are alcoholism, addiction to illicit street drugs, or the most recent scourge in America, prescription drug addiction.Only those with a financial interest in keeping people addicted to some kind of drug, rather than embracing real recovery, could possibly subscribe to the ‘incurable brain disease’ theory of addiction. Research efforts to prove that addiction is incurable is usually paid for by Big Pharma, looking for ways to sell more drugs, and by psychiatric-driven government grants. They refuse to acknowledge the recoveries from addiction that take place in the real world on a daily basis.Changes in biochemistry do occur when we imbibe alcohol or take drugs, but that does not constitute an ‘incurable brain disease’ any more than the those that take place when we eat chocolate, watch a movie, smell a skunk, or recall a love affair. When people do almost anything, or think about almost anything, biochemical changes are taking place. That’s how the brain and body function — we are, physically at least, a busy biochemical factory of incalculable complexity.Consider these facts:Drugs and alcohol don’t affect everyone’s brain in the same way.The severity of the effects they do have vary widely from person to person.While many try the same substances, only a few become addicted.No two people react exactly the same way to the same mental or physical stimuli. This is as true for the effects of drugs, and for an addict’s emotional involvement in drug addiction, as it is when we devour a bowl of our favorite ice cream, or watch Tiger Woods finesse a 30-yard, tournament-winning putt. It’s all input, and we all react and interact in our own way.None of the moment-to-moment alterations in brain chemistry or brain function, no matter what causes them, have ever led to a cure for anything. Therefore, say the brain disease theorists, it must be incurable. With all their years probing brain function and studying brain chemistry, they know less about addiction that is useful than your neighborhood mechanic knows about your car. At least he can fix the family sedan when it stops working.And don’t forget that hundreds of clinical trials for drugs purported to treat ‘brain diseases’ or ‘brain malfunctions’ like depression, have all shown placebos achieving equal or even better results than the brain drugs. And that’s without the laundry list of dangerous and even deadly drug side effects.There may be a genetic or metabolic component to the ease and speed with which some people become physically dependent on a drug. But again, this is not evidence of any neurological, genetic, metabolic or any other physical ‘incurable brain disease’. Whether it is alcoholism, crack, heroin or methadone addiction, or any kind prescription drug addiction, there is plenty of evidence to show that addiction is, in fact, a curable condition. Thousands of former addicts now walking around healthy and substance-free attest to that fact.The widespread failure of most commonly available drug detox and rehab programs are not because addiction is an ‘incurable brain disease’. Rampant rehab failures exist because of lousy detox protocols, and lousy, too-short rehab programs.Medically supervised detox programs based on each patient’s unique metabolism, health requirements and personal needs, are routinely successful. These are the opposite of the ubiquitous, unreliable ‘one-size-fits-all’ detox programs which fail to properly set someone up for drug rehab.Then, the usual 30-day rehab programs that abound across the country are doomed to horrendous rates of relapse, because they are too shallow, and too short. This has led many people to consider real recovery an impossible dream. But research has absolutely proven that serious addictions, including any prescription drug addiction, requires at least 90 days — and double that time is not out of the question.A personally-tailored medical drug detox program, followed by a suitably lengthy period in rehab, will accomplish two very important things: It will give you your life back, and prove you weren’t suffering from an ‘incurable brain disease’.