Methadone to be dumped in Scotland as treatment for heroin addiction

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phr

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Methadone to be dumped in Scotland as treatment for heroin addiction
News-Medical.net
3.28.08


A new approach to tackling heroin addiction is about to be tried out in the United Kingdom.

Health authorities in Scotland are planning to phase out methadone treatment programmes for heroin addicts and offer instead alternative therapies and residential rehabilitation programmes.

The change in policy follows mounting evidence which has shown that methadone programmes, first introduced in the 1970s, have failed to reduce addiction rates or cut the number of drug-related deaths.

The shift in policy indicates a radical change in attitude from using the heroin substitute to wean addicts off heroin - to encouraging abstinence by offering support via a range of other treatment options.

Methadone is also an addictive opiate and costs the government around £12m a year and research suggests that five years after starting the treatment, 90% of addicts are still taking methadone.

Recent government figures show that drug-related deaths rose to a record high of 421 in 2006 and methadone was present in 97 of those recorded deaths, 25 more than in the previous year.

The new drug strategy, the first significant change in policy in almost a decade, will be unveiled in Scotland this week and is expected to include a multi-million-pound expansion in the range of alternatives to methadone to help addicts back into society.

These are expected to include psychological therapies, residential abstinence programmes, support for families and children and education and employment training - all designed to help addicts live a drug-free life.

A recent study by the Centre for Drug Misuse at Glasgow University revealed that whereas one in three heroin users who received residential treatment was drug free after three years, only 3 per cent of those who were placed on methadone were drug free after the same period.

Link!
 
This is outrageous


subutex is still available though?

unfortunately for some people subutex just doesnt cut it.

My ex gf was on 4 grams a day habit she managed to stay on subutex but i feel she's more the exception really
 
Yeah, good luck with all that. What are all the long term methadone patients gonna do once it's gone?

Methadone is also an addictive opiate and costs the government around £12m a year and research suggests that five years after starting the treatment, 90% of addicts are still taking methadone.
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Ummm, how much will the new plan cost? Sounds like it's counseling and in-patient based. That's a lot more expensive than out-patient methadone. Oh, and how much more will it cost if the former methadone patients get back on heroin?



Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of methadone. Hell, I'm all for not using long term opiate substitution. But, that's just for me. Different things work for different people. And, afaik, methadone is no less successful than in patient rehab(or NA, ha!).
 
Government is doing something about addiction and treatment, and I think that's a good thing. I don't know how things are in Scotland, but in America the current drug laws and policies are terrible. I'm pretty sure that even saying that is no longer legal (I'm being sarcastic, kind of)... Anyways, the point is that as long as some new action is being pursued that opens the door for other alternative action to be explored.

I just hope they maintain the program for those currently on it... but knowing how government and the media work, probably the reason they don't mention it in that article is that the plan sucks! That is, they didn't even consider the current patients, at least that's what would happen in America under the current administration.
 
Just to reiterate what phrozen said, £12m spent on methadone a year to keep people off the streets vs. a whole lot more than £12m if they do not supply methadone.

I would suggest that the toll on society would be 10 fold greater than £12m if methadone was to be withdrawn.

Obviously bup is still an option, but for how long? All the reports coming from America suggest that Bup addiction is every bit as hard to kick as methadone. Cant wait to see what happens here.

I am all for living a drug free life, but this is just not a possibility for most.

Edit: It is a bad time to be trialing a new program with all the H coming from the middle east.
 
This whole thing was based on a stupid "study" that supposedly showed that only 3% of methadone patients were drug free after 3 years. Most people who heard those results assumed that they meant that 97% were still using illicit drugs--NOT SO! In fact it simply meant that only 3% were free of all drugs INCLUDING methadone after 3 years on methadone. The only people who were considered successes were those who were OFF their medications. If you were doing GREAT on methadone--free of illicit drugs, working, stable, paying your own bills, etc--you were considered a treatment FAILURE, because you were still taking methadone, a drug that, after you are stabilized on it and tolerant to it, does NOT make you high but simply normalizes brain chemistry that has in many cases been permenently damaged by opioid addiction.

Now, what kind of treatment for a CHRONIC, incurable disease (which addiction supposedly IS) is only considered a success if you can get OFF that treatment in "X" number of years?

The "study" supposedly shows that about 30% of heroin addicts stayed clean for a couple of years after abstinence based inpatient rehab. Ok, fine (though I somehow doubt it). That still leaves 70% shooting up in the streets. Will taking methadone treatment away from them make anyting better?

People need a VARIETY of treatment options--not just abstinence, not just 12 step, not just methadone, not just bupe, etc. Closing off any one option--especially one that the World Health Organization has proclaimed an essential medication, and has been shown to be the MOST effective treatment available for opioid addiction in the USA, where abstinence based treatment is rampant.
 
And I thought this thread was about the USA spraying Scotland with methadone.

Don't laugh--based on our history, it could've been true...
 
I dont know if it will work, but I like that theyre trying to do something.

I personally think that forcing more addicts to quit instead of maintaining them is a good thing. But eliminating opiate replacement completely may be the wrong choice.

Im eager to see how this goes.
 
Very bad news brought on by the fact that lots of overdoses there are Methadone related; too many for the politicians.
It shouldn't effect us in England coz of divolution and all that.
A sad sad day, it really is.
 
wel i went on methadone after a heroin habit and stayed on it for a few years...i got off and as i look back, i dont think methadone is a success overall...the clinic i went to, even the counselors admitted that over 75% of the patients were still using heroin or benzos in addition to methadone....it seems from what most people say from all atround the world, that methadone works for the minority, and many people that stay on it hate the fact they are reliant on it...

subuxone seems to be working similar to methadone..its great at first but getting off sucks and its expensive...like above poster said, this is supposedly a chronic, incurable disease with a 90% relapse rate so of course the current remedies arent wporking...what else is there though??
 
By the plane load?

I thought we were flying B-52 Bombers over Scotland and peppering them with Methadone tablets from the headline.

Snowbear
 
Bad idea. there has got to be tons of ppl who have been on methadone for most of their life. what are they going to do now? try some "new" pill that wont make them feel as good. i see disaster written all over this idea.
 
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We should turn the clock back and give pure Diacetylmorphine to addicts and try to change their lifestyles,then slowly wean them off.

Methadone is good for stopping cold turkey but an addict will still seek out Heroin,fuck off the Methadone and perscribe pure Heroin.
 
nabollocks said:
Obviously bup is still an option, but for how long? All the reports coming from America suggest that Bup addiction is every bit as hard to kick as methadone. Cant wait to see what happens here.
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Fuck, when I got on bupe in rehab/halfway house/outpatient, life was beautiful....not a thing in the world that I couldn't handle. Once I got off suboxone reality hit me HARD. Life isn't so easy anymore....i've been thinkin about lying to my doctor just to get on suboxone again just because it made life easier.

As to the article I really do think some people need methadone. Even if it's nothing more than a way to trick people into treatment.
 
^^well all opiates make life alot better while you are under the influence...i remember wheni started tajking them, i felt too good, boredom was gone, anxiety was lessened, i was more social, more interested in life and then when you have to get off the drugs, you come down and realize life isnt nearly as peachy as it was on drugs..thats why everyone keeps going back to the opiates because nothing else in life can mimic that feeling, or if there is let me know!!!!!!!!lolso of course when someone can stay on opiods for life, why would they go thru the pain of detoxing??
 
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