Bomb319
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2011
- Messages
- 583
First of all, I've noticed that about 90% of the people who reflexively bash methadone fall into one of 2 categories:
1. They went on it thinking it would be a legal way to get smashed daily without ever having to worry about buying again
2. Simply aquiring the methadone every day is a huge pain in the ass, requiring a drive of 10 minutes or more.
Then there's the fact that many people on maintenance fudge their doses by overlapping (something I admit I'm guilty of).
The thing that surprises me is how so many of the people who have had bad experiences with methadone admit that it did control their drug use while they were on it, but then viciously turn on it after experiencing the horrid withdrawal it produces. We all know methadone is an opiate, but I think that a lot of people (if not most) tend to forget how horrible it is to wake up sick every day and not know how they're going to (often illegally) scrape enough money together to get high or feel normal - made so much worse by the fact that they are too sick to even want to move. Methadone can completely remove that level of hell and bring you back to some semblance of normalcy. Of course it's not going to be a bed of roses to come off of, but would you honestly rather be where you were? You might tell yourself that you would rather be, convincing yourself that having the choice to do it all over, you could simply choose not to use, knowing what you now know. That's very unrealistic, IMO. If used as prescribed, strictly as a tool to aid withdrawal and not as a panacea, and especially combined with other psychological measures like NA, methadone is probably the most valuable and successful legal tool available for shaking the heroin monkey off our backs. I mean, what else comes even close for those of us with heavy, chronic habits?
I admit it's probably a lot easier for us in Canada who can simply go get our daily witness at the closest pharmacy, and I do understand why going out of your way every day can become an enormous chore; but isn't that something to consider a little more thoroughly before going on it in the first place?
1. They went on it thinking it would be a legal way to get smashed daily without ever having to worry about buying again
2. Simply aquiring the methadone every day is a huge pain in the ass, requiring a drive of 10 minutes or more.
Then there's the fact that many people on maintenance fudge their doses by overlapping (something I admit I'm guilty of).
The thing that surprises me is how so many of the people who have had bad experiences with methadone admit that it did control their drug use while they were on it, but then viciously turn on it after experiencing the horrid withdrawal it produces. We all know methadone is an opiate, but I think that a lot of people (if not most) tend to forget how horrible it is to wake up sick every day and not know how they're going to (often illegally) scrape enough money together to get high or feel normal - made so much worse by the fact that they are too sick to even want to move. Methadone can completely remove that level of hell and bring you back to some semblance of normalcy. Of course it's not going to be a bed of roses to come off of, but would you honestly rather be where you were? You might tell yourself that you would rather be, convincing yourself that having the choice to do it all over, you could simply choose not to use, knowing what you now know. That's very unrealistic, IMO. If used as prescribed, strictly as a tool to aid withdrawal and not as a panacea, and especially combined with other psychological measures like NA, methadone is probably the most valuable and successful legal tool available for shaking the heroin monkey off our backs. I mean, what else comes even close for those of us with heavy, chronic habits?
I admit it's probably a lot easier for us in Canada who can simply go get our daily witness at the closest pharmacy, and I do understand why going out of your way every day can become an enormous chore; but isn't that something to consider a little more thoroughly before going on it in the first place?