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Methadone culture question

J

jjdonkey

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Joined
Jan 4, 2010
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43
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Chicago
Hey y'all. I'm in the midst of doing some online research regarding methadone clinics. I don't need access to one, or addiction help or support or recovery, but the web automatically assumes you need help if you type "methadone" into a search bar. What I'm really looking for is sort of "day in the life" stories of what it's like to work there and/or use the clinic for help. I'm an opiate addict, currently on long term suboxone maintenance and therapy and all that, and I'm struggling to get my passion for writing back (that's a whole different story). I started writing some short stories the other day, but I sort of need the 'insiders view' of a methadone clinic. I know individuals ON methadone maintenance, but not well enough to pick their brains.

In a perfect world, there would be a blog somewhere with personal stories...or a "history of..." type thing, but I don't know how to get through all the ads and crap to find them.

Any ideas?
 
Hmmm... I'm not sure that I would go so far as to call it a methadone culture, but it's certainly a, uhm, well... I'm not sure what word I would use to describe it.

But anyway, I'm sure that someone here will chime in soon to share their experience...
 
I just got off methadone in April I was on it for 5 year at 100 mg. It was probably the stupidest decision Ive made putting myself on it. It numbed me out and was more tedious then anything. The councilors really didn't seem like they cared for anybody and there were alot of people that made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Not because I felt in anyway above them but there were some really sick people there, open sores, coughing and spitting blood, HIV. Plus about 4 months before I got off I find out methadone screws with your heart and most methadone clinics along with a blood test will give you an ekg every few months which they didn't. Alot of people would go there just to make connects, like a coffee house for drug addicts. So what I would say is there really isn't a culture, no style, no type just a bunch of drug addicts getting their legal high.
 
There is nothing special about Methadone Clinics, if anything they are pretty boring, because it;s the same thing everyday. Luckily I only go once a week now but it's the same routine. You walk into the clinic, the person at the entrance window gives your card and a number. If you don't get your card, that means you got to go see your councilor. I only got to see mine once a month so I only get poiss tested once a month. Anyways, you sign and date the card. You walk up to the dosing windows. Usually it's busy, the line is long, and you wait for your turn. While you are waiting people talk about the glory days, prescriptions they might be getting, people the cop from, all kinds of shit. You get up the window and give the nurse your card and number. She looks at the card and types some things in a computer. She fills up your bottles and dosing cup with orange wafers. I get 100mg a day. She then slides them to you and you double check they have the right amount. Then you slide them back and she fills them water. You take your dose, wash it down with a chaser of some kind of generic orange powdered drink and then she labels and seals your bottles. You put them in your box, and you are on your way. Outside the clinic there are people smoking, some waiting in cars. People are talking, trading pills, and trading doses for bags out of view of cameras and the clinic windows.

There is no culture. It's just a place you go to get right. People usually keep to themselves unless they used to get high together or know each other outside the clinic.
 
^ I've heard them mentioned, but don't know what they are, and more so what their purpose is.
 
Well the reason I had to start bringing one is because some dude at my clinic had a party and somebody got into his methadone and od'd. After that they started being really strict about it.
 
Tommyboy said:
^ I've heard them mentioned, but don't know what they are, and more so what their purpose is.
Click to expand...
If you got take home doses you had to have a box with a lock. I don't know if that is a law or just the rules but any doses that leave the clinic need to be locked in a secure container.
 
In York there definately does seem to be a methadone culture, which is kind of a sub-culture of the heroin scene. At a lot of the clinics there even seems to be a weird similarity in clients clothing. A lot of sweat pants and jerseys. Whereas heroin users are usually younger and thinner, the "methadonians" are often more pear shaped, and in there late thirtys to fourties.

You can always tell when theres a nearbye methadone clinic in NYC if you see a large group of people drinking coffee, slurring their words, and huddling around suspiciously, smoking cigarettes and hitting each other with canes. Is definately not as chic as heroin.

Im describing only what Ive seen, which is usually the worst of the methadone patients. I don't mean to imply that everyone on methadone is an obese, toothless cripple. It's just that the patients who take there treatment somewhat seriously wouldn't be recognizable as being in the methadone "scene", which is why methadone often has a lot of stigma attached to it.
 
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