Guilty About Taking Methadone

I have been goin to a Methadone treatment Clinic for 14 months now so that I will stay away from and not withdrawal from opiates....I go to relapse prevention group every Friday and I always seem to have a problem tellin other patients/people on the street,etc. that Ive been clean from pills,coc,meth,etc.for 14 months....Do you think Im wrong for feeling like Im really NOT clean do to taking methadone....Or do you think Im clean because of the type of program it is

I think people on opiate maintenance programs have every right to consider themselves clean.
I mean consider someone who injected heroin on a daily basis for say, ten years, and is now sustaining themselves on suboxone or methadone. I think they should be proud of themselves and yes, should consider themselves clean.
Honestly, if you feel like you're clean and want to tell peole that, do it! Doesn't really matter if others think you're getting ahead of yourself. IMO you should be happy with/proud of yourself.

Congratulations on taking a big step! It may make it easier to stay away from other drugs since you have stabilized your intake. I would not feel guilty at all about being on methadone. Like I said it allows many people to rejoin the ranks of society and lead productive lives. Guilt, in any form, is a major weapon that addiction uses to try and get you to use like you used to. Although you are not "clean" you have accomplished allot.. I mean methadone doesn't deter you from wanting to use coke or speed that much, I guess it does help a little but i know that you have probably had the urge to use stimulants.
However I feel that when you are ready you should take the plunge and get off the methadone. I n august i detoxed off four years of a 150mgpd of methadone, 260mgpd of ir oxy, and 6mgpd of xanax. It was pretty intense but with a taper and the addition of clonidine. I was able to eat, sleep, have sex, take care of my responsibilities, go to a huge water park, go to a pro base ball game, ect ect, basically do almost what ever I wanted.. I just had to deal with moderate discomfort. I think the dose of clonidine i was on was .2 or .5 mg every 3.75 hours but please check with a health care official about that. of all the things the clonodine did, I think the best things were to to cut the restless leg thing by like 90% and of coarse the god send of around four hours a night of sleep and of coarse did wonders for the craving, in fact i don't remember craving that much at all, i think it was more of a desire to take something to kill the physical withdraw symptoms. The clonidine is a nonaddictive nonnarcotic blood pressure medication that they found does wonders for opiate, benzo, alcohol withdraw. I don't want to put you off because there wasn't an hour that went buy where i didn't say to myself, what the f!#k this isn't that bad why didn't i do this ages ago. the problem with methadone is that its half life is so long and you need to get all that out then go another three or for days before the initial miracle hapns. you will have tingly skin, or that frozen sun burn tingle at various levels for moths but after you go through the other its no big deal. A large group of my opiate receptors also turned of at about 4.5 to 5 months and my mind seemed to clear over night.. ha, i didn't even realize how foggy I was cause i was living like that for so long. I relay do feel better 98% of the time clean than any time when i was using. I realize now that what i considered a feeling really really good at the end of my use was not even as good as i feel all the time now. If i can do it so can you. My very best wishes.

use that guilty feeling as motivation to taper and jump off. that's what ultimately got me off, though i was on suboxone for 3 years.

Don't disclose that you are on Methadone. Someone always wants to give you a hard time if you do. So fuck em. You're clean of the drug that addicted you and that's it. period. rodney

Well Im not ready just yet to quit,but I will be when the time comes....Im also gonna take the advice here and make myself think Im clean so I dont feel the guilt anymore

rodneyrdr said:

Don't disclose that you are on Methadone. Someone always wants to give you a hard time if you do. So fuck em. You're clean of the drug that addicted you and that's it. period. rodney

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I second this. Don't tell people if you are on maintenance.

rodneyrdr said:

Don't disclose that you are on Methadone. Someone always wants to give you a hard time if you do. So fuck em. You're clean of the drug that addicted you and that's it. period. rodney

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Good advice indeed.
I'm six months off a heroin habit but still on methadone.I had the same feelings of 'am I clean or not as I still take methadone?'
Mate you are off the drugs, no longer wasting yr cash etc so yes you are clean and that's the way you should think of yourself.
Methadone is just a medicine you take to stop you being ill.
Congratulations on all your clean time.

You're free of living like an addict. You are clean.

I think who cares what the people think who say you're not clean if you're on methadone. "Clean" is however you want to define it. A lot of people don't realize that someone who is on a normal stabile maintenance dose of methadone does not get high from it, it merely alleviates withdrawal symptoms.

If you take your methadone as prescribed and are not trying to get high from it and you aren't using heroin or whatever your drug of choice was then that's clean in my book - you're clean from the drug you were addicted to. People shouldn't underestimate the difficulty in switching from heroin or whatever opioid you were addicted to to a once-daily dose of oral methadone - it is NOT just a "legal heroin" replacement as it does not have the same effects and you still have to work hard on your mental addiction and to keep yourself from using other drugs. All it does is take care of the physical dependence (*assuming you aren't on high ever-escalating doses of it).

What really matters more than whether you are "clean" or not (an arbitrary term IMO) is the effects on your life. If you are stabile and your use of methadone is having a beneficial effect on your life then that's what matters right?

However I don't think this thread really belongs in Basic Drug Discussion so I'm going to give it a try over in The Dark Side.

BDD -> TDS

i think the whole idea of being 'clean' is messed up; what matters is that your life is in control.

if it were heroin maintenance would people's opinions change in here? they shouldn't, yet you'd be addicted to the drug you were addicted to however you'd be stabilized on it. It's all the same IMO. Forget about being clean and the guilt and just try to live a functional productive life, whatever that is for you. I think this NA/AA talk seeps into people and is ultimately negative and creates shame and guilt where there shouldn't be.

RobotRipping said:

i think the whole idea of being 'clean' is messed up; what matters is that your life is in control.

if it were heroin maintenance would people's opinions change in here? they shouldn't, yet you'd be addicted to the drug you were addicted to however you'd be stabilized on it. It's all the same IMO. Forget about being clean and the guilt and just try to live a functional productive life, whatever that is for you. I think this NA/AA talk seeps into people and is ultimately negative and creates shame and guilt where there shouldn't be.

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Well said. As for if my opinion would change if it was legal heroin maintenance, I would say that it would greatly depend on the circumstances. If it was still a rollercoaster of high/sick/high and having an adverse impact on the person's life, health, relationships, mental health, etc then I would still consider it problematic. It also wouldn't be being "clean" from one's drug of choice in that case. But if someone were on heroin maintenance and it was just alleviating withdrawals and enabled them to have a normal life then I would say why judge it (not that I would ever judge anyone, but just trying to explain the potential differences or lack of differences compared to methadone maintenance), personally I really think heroin maintenance should be available in North America.

Anyway, guilt is a useless and in fact harmful emotion when it comes to recovery IMO.

Do not let laypeople determine if you are clean or not, that is one of my bigger problems with 12 step groups. It is between you and your doctor. Not some random joe schmoe in the rooms. When I was attending meetings I had people telling me to get off my anti-depressants and my sleeping pills. Problem was, these are both legitimate issues I had before I started using. Everything was prescribed by my doctor who I was totally honest with.

I never told people I was on Suboxone. I am off of it now, but it really helped me at the time.

Your taking the methadone because you realized that you had a problem. Methadone has been such a wonder for addicts that want to get "clean" your doing a great job IMO.

Keep up the good work. I agree with not disclosing information about you being on methadone, but maybe if you did tell your dealers or whoever, they would respect it and not ask you if you'd like to buy their drugs.

Congrats again man. Opiates sure are one hell of a rollercoaster ride.