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What is methadone?

Posted October 27, 2010 - 12:58pm

Methadone is a rigorously well-tested medication that is safe and efficacious for the treatment of narcotic withdrawal and dependence. For more than 30 years this synthetic narcotic has been used to treat opioid addiction.

Heroin releases an excess of dopamine in the body and causes users to need an opiate continuously occupying the opioid receptor in the brain. Methadone occupies this receptor and is the stabilizing factor that permits addicts on methadone to change their behavior and to discontinue heroin use.

Taken orally once a day, methadone suppresses narcotic withdrawal for between 24 and 36 hours. Because methadone is effective in eliminating withdrawal symptoms, it is used in detoxifying opiate addicts.

It is, however, only effective in cases of addiction to heroin, morphine, and other opioid drugs, and it is not an effective treatment for other drugs dependencies.

Methadone reduces the cravings associated with heroin use and blocks the high from heroin, but it does not provide the euphoric rush. Consequently, methadone patients do not experience the extreme highs and lows that result from the waxing and waning of heroin in blood levels.

Ultimately, the patient remains physically dependent on the opioid, but is freed from some of the challenges involved in living with a heroin dependency, many of them behavioral.

Numerous studies have shown that maintaining opioid dependant individuals on methadone has many benefits including:

  • reduced illicit drug use
  • improved health status as a result of access to treatment
  • contact with other services
  • decreased transmission of HIV, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis B
  • decreased illegal activity
  • increased employment
  • decreased cost to society
  • decreased mortality