Newpharmablog. Health News

Giving addicts prescribed drugs to get them off illegal drugs is not only a waste of resources; we believe it also delays their eventual recovery. Methadone maintenance treatment usually just makes heroin addicts into methadone addicts. Likewise, giving an alcoholic tranquillisers simply turns an alcoholic into a tranquilliser addict. It is like giving brown sugar, instead of white, to a diabetic!

Of course, many addicts and alcoholics beg for substitute drugs, because they see it as the easy way out. They cannot envisage life without some kind of chemical crutch. Unfortunately, the prescribed drugs, whether methadone, benzodiazepines, Temgesic (buprenorphine) or DF 118 (dihydrocodeine tartrate) are all highly addictive for addicts and alcoholics. They abuse these drugs for their mood-altering effects.

Tranquillisers in particular have more prolonged withdrawals than either alcohol or illegal drugs, so that keeping addicts on prescribed drugs lands them in even greater difficulty when they want to come off.

Besides, addicts are rarely truthful about their drug habit. ‘When I got put on a methadone programme, it was meant to be a reducing programme,’ recalls Carol. ‘But I never got it reduced.   Every time I went to the clinic they’d say “How about a lower methadone script?” I would make up excuses why not. I’d say “If you lower my methadone I’ll go out and use heroin.” The irony of this was that I was scoring heroin anyway, even though I was on the methadone programme.   Especially at weekends. I’d score then, as I didn’t count weekends.’

Indeed, methadone is widely available on the black market, because many addicts collect their methadone prescriptions, sell the methadone and buy heroin with the proceeds! Others simply add heroin and other illegal drugs on top of the methadone they are taking, sometimes with fatal results.

There is a further problem facing drug-dependence clinics. Each clinic spawns a network of patients who know each other and swap information about drugs – where to get them, what quality is available, current prices of methadone on the black market as well as current illegal drug prices, which doctors can be conned for a prescription and what is the best story to tell to them. Doctors who are generous with their prescribing often find themselves with a host of new clients.

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