muie
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
- Messages
- 849
Something not many people talk about and something many may not even be aware of is that methadone is cardiotoxic, meaning its bad for your heart. Not just methadone but all the other methadone related compounds like LAAM which was taken off and replaced mainly due to its cardiotoxicity and LAAM is very close to methadone in structure & design.
Recently all the MMT clinics in the region and probably the entire country, started being very strict with the amount of methadone per day that a patient can have. After 120mg/day one is required to take an ECG test (your hooked up to electrodes) to determine if her/his heart is safe enough for an increase, and even then you can only increase by 10mg maximum and if you need another 10mg increase then another ECG and in some instances even requiring blood samples.
In 2004 when I first when on the program it wasn't like this! The same clinic and within 4 months maximum I was able to go up from 10mg starting dose to 205mg/day. Sometimes double or triple dosing would get me 410mg-615mg/day and 2-3yrs of my life was spent like that on the couch with a bottle of klonopin 2mg by my side and a bowl of weed in my lap with the lighter constantly glued to my hand, the television on even while sleeping...but I digress
Serious topic guys, we all thought that as long as our opioids were free of acetaminophen, aspirin & ibuprofen everything was okay minus the addiction and constipation, in other words no liver or kidney damage. This is not the case it seems, at least with synthetic opioids like methadone.
I'm bring this to the attention of all methadone users and would also like to know if anyone else has heard of this!
Recently all the MMT clinics in the region and probably the entire country, started being very strict with the amount of methadone per day that a patient can have. After 120mg/day one is required to take an ECG test (your hooked up to electrodes) to determine if her/his heart is safe enough for an increase, and even then you can only increase by 10mg maximum and if you need another 10mg increase then another ECG and in some instances even requiring blood samples.
In 2004 when I first when on the program it wasn't like this! The same clinic and within 4 months maximum I was able to go up from 10mg starting dose to 205mg/day. Sometimes double or triple dosing would get me 410mg-615mg/day and 2-3yrs of my life was spent like that on the couch with a bottle of klonopin 2mg by my side and a bowl of weed in my lap with the lighter constantly glued to my hand, the television on even while sleeping...but I digress
Serious topic guys, we all thought that as long as our opioids were free of acetaminophen, aspirin & ibuprofen everything was okay minus the addiction and constipation, in other words no liver or kidney damage. This is not the case it seems, at least with synthetic opioids like methadone.
I'm bring this to the attention of all methadone users and would also like to know if anyone else has heard of this!
