Here's a discussion question for y'all dopefiends:
Do you agree with legal regulations on initial dose and rate of increase at methadone clinics?
Around these parts, it's something like 30 mgs with an increase of something like no more than 10 mg/wk. This is usually more than sufficient to stave off the Whiskey Delta's for folks with vicodin habits. But those ain't the fellas who are breaking in to houses for dope money. You take someone who's slamming a couple grams a day, he could need several hundred mg's just to be well enough to go to work.
However, IME, even if you have a nasty habit, the good thing about low dose regs is that, if you truly want to quit, then even though you need to fix up in about the amount of time it takes to drive home from the clinic, just having that little bit of methadone in your system allows you to taper your H dosing down quite a bit quicker than otherwise. So, the end result is that, in a few weeks when you're finally clean of H, you're left with a relatively low methadone habit compared to the monsterous one you would have been on if the clinic had started you off on a fully sufficient dose.