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Die from methadone withdrawal?

Youshady2

Youshady2

Greenlighter
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
28
Is it really possible to die from cold turkeying a 7 year high dose of methadone? I was told yes but I never found anything supporting this online, people get locked up all the time here in New Jersey with years of methadone Maintannce treatment to receive nothing but ibuprofen in jail. What would cause death maybe throwing up and choking is all I can think of , maybe high blood pressure
 
I dont think opiate withdrawal can kill you, and methadone is an opiate

alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal can kill you, but methadone is neither alcohol nor a benzo

someone correct me if im wrong
 
When you are withdrawing from long term high dose methadone, you will only WISH it would kill you.
 
yah i doubt you will die from wmethadone withdrawal. i like what nsauce said ^, you will probably WISH methadone withdrawal would kill you.

taper is always #1 if you can...when you CT, you already start out with the statistics against you (meaning you will be more likely to relapse, if sobriety is really your long-term goal.)
 
People have died from abruptly stopping high doses of methadone, for example in jail.

The precise cause of death can be hard to determine because most of the publicized cases are due to lawsuits after someone dies in jail after being denied their methadone, and they often receive no help/health care during withdrawal (despite obvious signs that they need help) and are just found dead in their cell. Sometimes it's hard to find out exactly how they died, but there are a number of cases where the person had no evidence of health problems that would have contributed to their death and the death is ruled as solely being caused by methadone withdrawal and not receiving medical care during withdrawal. Outside of info that comes out through lawsuits it's very difficult to find info about people who died from methadone withdrawal, since the death wouldn't be well-investigated or publicized.

From the cases I have read the cause of death is usually listed as heart failure, and/or attributed to complications of withdrawal like dehydration, malnutrition, seizures, etc. The jails/prisons want to cover it up, since they could have easily helped the person. It's hard to get good detailed info.

I'll find some links for you...
 
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Johnson suffered uncontrolled vomiting, diarrhea and tremors while her cellmates' pleas for help went unheeded. By the time paramedics arrived 12 hours after her withdrawal symptoms started, she had had catastrophic seizures that left her blue and without a pulse. She died five days later [after being taken off life support]. A hospital chaplain called to tell [her family that she] had arrived from the Orange County Jail "brain dead." A medical examiner later would rule that the Orlando woman had died from being forced to withdraw from methadone. [source]
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Susan Bennett was in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) [she was forced to withdraw in jail]. She was completely ignored, virtually untreated, and neglected by guards and the jail's medical staff. Her withdrawal (uncontrollable vomiting and defecating) culminated in a heart attack, resulting in her death. Her family sued Orange County and settled with them for $3 million. [source]
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In an autopsy released to KLTV through an "open records request," it is stated that [Amy] Cowling died from a probable seizure due to withdrawal from methadone and alprazolam. [source]
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^This last one is a bit different since methadone was not the only drug she had been taking, but it's considered that the methadone was a big factor, perhaps bigger than the alprazolam.

Someone posted in another thread:

ro4eva said:
Opiate withdrawal can kill you (it's rare, yes) depending on your predicament. If you're using a very large amount/very high tolerance; cardiovascular health may play a role as BP and HR increase significantly. Conditions/chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hepatitis, malnutrition, etc. may also contribute. I know of someone from my clinic who died while in withdrawal, except it was methadone (a very high dose). I'm not sure if the fact that methadone causes QT prolongation had anything to do with it. I do believe his obesity was a factor, but I'll never know for certain.
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Heroin withdrawal can be lethal too, but it's more rare as people are not usually taking such high doses in comparision to methadone and heroin withdrawal lasts for less time. There are a number of cases where people died from high-dose heroin withdrawal in jail too.
 
Can you imagine the kind of misery that would accompany dying from opiate withdrawal?
 
That's crazy I know New York doses inmates who are on methadone maintanance, New Jersey used to until people would kill each other over meds. I myself have never been to jail with a habit but I could not imagine the feeling. Are most prisons and jails against dosing I can not think of any reason why because it is a legit medical condition and they would inject you with something if you were going crazy and skitzo and that also won't kill you.
 
Susan Bennett was in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) [she was forced to withdraw in jail]. She was completely ignored, virtually untreated, and neglected by guards and the jail's medical staff. Her withdrawal (uncontrollable vomiting and defecating) culminated in a heart attack, resulting in her death. Her family sued Orange County and settled with them for $3 million. [source]
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Seems like such an awful way to die.
 
Thanks for posting that, swimmingdancer. Those where actually the exact cases I was referring to when I told the OP yesterday on a different thread that they could in fact die from CTing a 500mg habit... and which I'm sure was they started this thread. Going CT when you're on an extremely high dose of methadone is no joke, and it needs to be treated seriously. It is one of the many reasons the OP needs to stop buying other patients' doses and get down to their regular dose... using methadone like this completely defeats the point of being on MMT in the first place and is really going to do more harm than good in the long run. They're going to face WD sooner or later and it may be dangerous. I've known people who ended up in the hospital for methadone WD and they were at much smaller doses.
 
As I understand it, in one of these case studies the cause of death was cardiac arrest, something relatively understandable since opioid withdrawal causes hypertension. One of them was 'brain dead' (fatal seizure) and the other one was also a fatal seizure as stated.

The seizures are known to be rare, unless it's any different in methadone withdrawals, and the hypertension can basically happen during any opioid withdrawal. I guess my question is, does this happen very often? Should this be a cause of concern for the majority of methadone users?
 
^thank you swimming for posting and correcting me!!!

very interesting yet horrible stuff to hear about people dieing in jail from WD.
 
Chromophobia said:
As I understand it, in one of these case studies the cause of death was cardiac arrest, something relatively understandable since opioid withdrawal causes hypertension. One of them was 'brain dead' (fatal seizure) and the other one was also a fatal seizure as stated.

The seizures are known to be rare, unless it's any different in methadone withdrawals, and the hypertension can basically happen during any opioid withdrawal. I guess my question is, does this happen very often? Should this be a cause of concern for the majority of methadone users?
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I believe methadone withdrawal causes seizures more often than heroin/opiate withdrawal. My hunch is that it may have to do with the fact that methadone is an NMDA antagonist. Glutamate and NMDA cause seizures, so you would think that long term use of an NMDA antagonist would cause a hypersensitivity of NMDA receptors and perhaps increased levels of glutamate/NMDA, and therefore greatly increased effects of NMDA/glutamate upon cessation of the methadone and removal of the antagonism. Like in alcohol withdrawal. This is my theory at least.

From personal experience I felt methadone withdrawal it's own feel and additional symptoms compared to WD from opiates like heroin or morphine.

It's extremely difficult to assess how often people actually die (let alone almost die) from abrupt cessation of methadone, for the reasons I mentioned above: the only well-investigated cases are where the person's family filed a high-profile lawsuit. I don't think there is any way to know about the actual numbers because:
- If it happens in jail/prison or detox they want to cover it up and blame it on something else, and the details only come out if there is a lawsuit (and even then they really try to make it seem like it wasn't the WDs, although after some prominent lawsuits some jails/prisons - like the Orange County [Florida] Jail - have changed their policies on forbidding methadone in jail).
- Opioid withdrawal is widely believed to be totally non-fatal and many people really want to maintain that belief (for various reasons), so when someone does die it is often attributed to other things like a random hard attack or organ failure that coincidentally occurred while in WD, or the fact that they were in WD would not even be known if they were just found dead.
- If it happens during a rapid detox using naltrexone + analgesia they just attribute the deaths to the procedure, when the actually WD from the methadone could have played a role.

As for what makes methadone especially dangerous, well as I said it's not totally unique as people have died from withdrawal from other opioids (such as heroin), but to compare methadone and heroin for example:
- Methadone is usually taken in a much higher "equivalent" dose, especially after long-term use, therefore the dependence would be greater. For example, chronic use of 500mg of methadone per day could easily be somewhere along the lines of injecting several grams of pure heroin per day (it's very hard to know the exact conversion but as a guesstimate :)).
- Methadone affects the heart's QT interval, in fact people on methadone, especially high doses, are at greater risk for sudden death due to torsades de pointes. I definitely had weird things going on with my heart when tapering and quitting.
- Methadone is an NMDA antagonist as mentioned above.
- Methadone withdrawal lasts much longer than withdrawal from shorter-acting opioids, putting prolonged stress on the body and being more likely to cause serious dehydration or malnutrition.


Honestly I think an even bigger concern than WD directly causing death is the risk of suicide. I have had times in the past during methadone WD where I felt like the only reason I didn't kill myself was because I was too sick and weak to actually do so.
 
I don't think death is a common concern for most methadone users. Because it's a legally prescribed medication and not an illicit drug, patients don't have to worry about running out unless their insurance cannot pay for it and they're unable to pay for it all of a sudden. However, even in these cases they don't just cut you off because you can't pay. Most places due to a 15 day or longer quick taper. Extremely unpleasant I'm sure, but not deadly. Also, in cases where patients miss doses most don't suffer full blown WD symptoms for several days.. and some don't experience them till a week. So patients can't go CT by missing a few doses here and there. And because of methadone's extremely long half life, clinics are typically very careful to slowly taper patients wanting to come off methadone.

So I think the occasions where someone is going to abruptly stop taking their methadone is very rare. The few cases I've heard at are methadone patients ending up in jails/prisons that don't administer methadone or in cases like that of the OP. So you're not going to hear of deaths related to methadone WD very often. But in the cases where people on high doses of methadone are ceased abruptly and without taper death is a very real concern... the WD symptoms are going to be so extreme that the patient could die from dehydration, starvation, heart attack, or other extreme stresses to the body. And yes, like swimmingdancer stated, maybe even suicide due to extreme distress. Or maybe in an attempt to stop the symptoms the person may due something extreme that could result in death.
 
If you search back a couple years you can read my post where I give an account of my cellmate dying from oxy WD in jail. I, too, suffered life-threatening symptoms from WDing from Opana. I also got quite a bit of flack about that post so I found a few references covering opioid WD deaths - they're in that thread I don't recall the title of it but its along the lines of "Opioid WD fatal?" Anyway look it up it has good info from lots of BLrs here.
 
My mother and I have both used opiates, albeit it not recreationaly or together for a high but as pain management and any high has always been welcomed but we both suffer or suffered in my mothers case from chronic pain from various causes. My mother started methadone treatment about 6 months ago trying to wean off all the other opiates she was on or abusing. On July 26th she died from Methadone withdraw. The day before she missed her dose and didn't tell me till the withdraw symptoms hit her...HARD. I moved in a few years ago to help her out and when she started going through such bad withdraw I became severely concerned. I begged her to let me take her to the hospital, that they would give her the dose or they could monitor her. She said she was too embarrassed to go to the e.r. and just wanted to tough it out till the next morning. Even though I told her I didn't think this was a good idea, I agreed to take her the next morning as she was in no shape to drive. I sat with her and watched her cry and puke all over herself all day. It was gut wrenching. About 2 in the morning I told her I was going to lay down for a minute. When I came back at 5 to see if she needed help getting dressed to go to the clinic she was dead. I believe that all the vomiting caused a heart attack and she died. Her lips were blue and riggor had already started to set in. They think she died shortly after I went to lay down. So yes, you CAN DIE. Especially if you have other health problems such as heart disease when you go into wd
 
It is possible but rare. There was a docu on youtube, where this guy films all of his heroin usage. Anyways when it was finally time to give up, he went to detox and died in there.
So it does happen..
 
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