How come Done so polarising?

[chassa2005]

I notice that a lot of people seem to really hate the Done (whereas others like it), and the reference to it as liquid handcuffs scares me a little. I have just started a maintenance program and am currently on 40mg, so far I don't mind it. It's an anxiolytic and quite a good painkiller, though there is no buzz to be had. It is also sedating but that effect appeals to me.

I chose it over Bupe because I clung to that sentence towards the back of certain editions of Naked Lunch where Burroughs talks about his negative experience with Demerol and how the transition to Methadone was life saving. He describes Methadone as being "...completely satisfying to the addict, an excellent painkiller, and at least as addicting as morphine." I wouldn't say it was completely satisfying but so far it isn't too bad.

So I guess I was wondering why some people really loathe it? And why, after having been on it for a while, do some people desperately want out? What effect(s) does it have that leave people eager to kick it?

It's just that so far it seems to be ok but if that's the way it traditionally runs, i.e. starts out fine but soon becomes a trap, then I wonder if it wouldn't be wise to give the Done away before it tightens its grip.

I'm really appreciative of any advice any of you can give me.

Thanks!

[ka11ink]

Because of its extremely long half life constipation is a real problem because u basically never don't have opiates in you. People are also really scared of it because it's probably the most dangerous opiate to use recreationally. They expect to feel buzzed in 30 mins and whenthey dont, they take more and more until they've taken too much and when it all kicks in 2 hrs later it's too much.

[Duckfeet]

For some, it's a lifesaver: gets'em off the street dope, can sort out their lives, all that...some use it for maintenance, seem fairly happy on it...

Me it serves it's purpose, gets me off the street dope, when that becomes unbearable or the chase itself becomes unbearable...

But it also gives me all the problems of daily longterm opiates: horrible constipation particularly, and at the same time, no euphoria, no rush...just gets rid of withdrawal symptoms so I can safely detox off it, which I did...to me, mdone maintenance, (and bupe) is just pale gov't approved substitute for heroin maintenance, which actually does work for incorrigible longterm addicts like me...for me, methadone, is just trading in one set of complications for another...everybody's different.

I don't know which gets me more depressed and suicidal: kicking opiates I love, or facing longterm methadone maintenance...after first couple of happy weeks on methadone, my "spark", or whatever it is that keeps me happy and curious and excited about the world...slowly goes out...

I guess I'm glad it's there: I'm pretty much guaranteed a "habitual offender" life beef it I get seriously busted again...but o how we pay for the methadone reprieve from the street junky life...

[Badly Drawn Girl]

You'll find a myriad of reasons that people don't like it. I think a lot of people get to a point where they want off of it because in a sense they want their freedom back. It can be a hassle and I suppose it can be upsetting thinking of it as a forever lifestyle. Sometimes it's because they want the option to get high occasionally. But the list goes on and on.

I was counseled by many, addicts and non-addicts alike, not to get on methadone. It was the topic of much discussion and hand wringing in my personal life. As a result it took me years to finally go in. I wish I hadn't listened to all the naysayers. But my circumstances are a bit different. I know that I will require constant pain relief for life. I'm not going to get better. So I've already dealt with the emotions that come from knowing I will need to take something every day for the rest of my life. Given my issues with self-medicating, I don't see myself ever being able to take my pills normally (because I'll never be prescribed adequate pain relief.) Add to that the fact that methadone has proven to be the longest lasting pain relief for me, and it stops my depression, gives me a burst of energy, and is relatively inexpensive, and the choice was clear. I don't even mind the drive every morning. I wake up sick and I'm more than happy to go get well. But I've never taken meds in order to get high. I can see the methadone being a bit of a bummer in that regards. For me, pain relief is enough.

[trainwrecker]

I was on MMT for almost 4 years before I switched to bupe. I loved it at the time, it is a good buzz when you take enough to get past your tolerance. In retrospect though it was one of the roughest times in my life, I was just useless.

I got takehomes three times a week and would just down all of them as soon as I got them and just nodd the fuck out for the day. The next day I wouldn't feel too bad, not great but alright. Once a week I would have to go three days until I picked up and on that third day I would be desprately trying to cop a piece of tar. It was a nasty cycle that basiclly rendered me useless 4-5 days out of the week, but I just didn't care.

Now I've been on bupe about a year and a half and I am in so much better shape. I don't really get high any more but since I'm doing more with my life I don't feel the need to be nodded out all the time.

So my thoughts; methadone is a good drug if the time is right. It saved me from some pretty bad shit that my dope addiction was leading to. But it can be as bad or worse than heroin if you let it get out of control. So much of it depends on the user and where they are in their addiction.

[Raz]

Fuck me, av you opened a can a worms here, its enuff to make a bod like me say "cor blimey, fuck a duck", (ya all seen mary poppins right...:D)

My experience amigo is dis; if ya ever have da misfortune to have to suffer methadone withdrawal CT, then you will have an epithany about why dis shit methadone is reffered to as liquid handcuffs...

Taken in controlled clinical situations it can be a life saver....But when ya start fuckin around wiv it, problems start....It has a very long withdrawal life, smack you'll be over in 2/3 weeks...You could still be feelin methadone wd after 5/6wks....And its a very very fine line between od an not od...

We lost a cool cool hombre here just recently fru methadone "adventures".....

[StinkyPickle]

Raz, you must have the director's cut, because I don't remember Mary Poppins fucking a duck.

[Raz]

She only says it when she;s really freaked....Which is wat appened to me when i tried to cluck out a massive methadone habit cold turkey.....I woulda fucked a duck if it meant i was gonna get well...

Ya tell me ya aint seen dat mary poppins vid on da net?....:)

[AnitaFix]

Most of the points having been covered here..

I'd just like to add there are 2 ways to use meth imo.

1) keep your dose as low as possible (i don't mean listen to buddy who is taking 30mg & is satisfied..
unless u want to be sick for a while until you stabilize, I'd up it until you are good). for me this was that
"midline" of 60mg that seems to always do it. Now, I was not a very heavy H user when I started so.
The point I'm trying to make is , this is the methadone crutch type deal.. something to use when you can't pickup. It will keep the sick off, but don't expect much after that initial glow fades after 2 weeks on a stable dose. I would guesstimate 70% or so guys at my clinic continue using (in my pharmacy only one patient, who is on meth for CP is getting carries, meaning everyone else gets dirty tests & are still using). This can be a problem if you want t oreduce, because (illuse my case) even 3 boosts of junk a week can create some difficulty, like I could see myself dropping 10mg, feeling uncomfortable so adding more H in the mix (so it's like im not giving up quiting meth, but really I'm not making the situtation any better). naturally the answer is to cut out street dope & wait it out. I've yet to achieve this & you have no idea how much shit my family's been giving me. to them - methadone is waste, my doc's no better then the dealers.

2) go up - way way up!! get fucking loaded on dat s#$% g!! start tooting rock if you have to. Im not kidding, this is hopw it "works" for some people. you get really hooked on done, ur personality chages (like a fellow opiophile explained ot me at length) and you jones for this stuff as you would for a hit. maybe it's not so..maybe some just get used to it. I mean a sober duude taking my 60 will get loaded, but just like me he should get used to it. I want to hear from people on the high end. My doc was in a local magazine years back & he preascribed something close to 1000mg once..wow. anyway, i could see the high dose being an effective blocker of street dope but those other meth issues just get magnified & the whole stereotype of junkies switching to rock has been witnessed many a time. I've doubled up on meth & even though I didn't dig the high that much (even when i do a little more then usual , i get edgy for some reason) but i could see this as an effective blocker. I mean, no way I'd risk doing my dope at that point - I'd either OD or just not even feel the faintest rush.

hope this helps, maybe there is no division & its just our attitudes towards it. I mean if you are already really far gone, then maybe a high dose would put you in the same "#1" category as me.

One thing I've learned from my junky friend who've been on the program for a few years is that most prefer to switch back to their DOC & kick that cold turkey rather then do the meth reduct. I only personally know 2 people who got off it w/o any problem.. i think they are the ones who just somehow decided thats it for opiates, wiggled out of that bio-chemical leash. but some of us are also muzzled by other substances & can't begin to gnaw at that tether (to use extensive bondage metaphors :p)

[stick+lick]

Like everyone said-theres reasons for the love, there are reasons for the hate.

My suggestion? Don't go into this thinking like this is just a way to continue your drug use without repricussions. If you look at methadone as a way out of feeling like your going to go out of your mind from boredom or cravings then you wont except to much. This is a treatment, not a cure all. Things will not be perfect, but hopefully they will be better.

I think for a lot of people they find themselves NOT getting high anymore, still paying money, still fighting with the clinic and they forget how much the 'done is doing for them craving wise. They taper, the craving and withdrawal inevitably comes back and then it's 'dones fault they are in this prediciment. It's like they suddenly forgot why they got on it to begin with....like methadone made them an addict.

Then there are folks that find themselves living better but not as well as they want to be...they want to be cured or they want to be able to still get high occasionally. Or they are sedated or {insert problem here} they just never really get out of methadone what they wanted. They use it they way they used other drugs or they feel too sedated to get on with their lives....they have the freedom of being dependent on a legal drug instead of the chase of an illegal drug...but other than that they feel the same. This isn't really methadones fault--it's the addiction---but methadone doesn't really help these people as much as they wish it would either. their dreams of being free of the "beast" don't come to fruitation. If they add benzo's to the mix its all over, because nothing is more sloppy or MORE DANGEROUS then someone on methadone and benzo's and once you've got the bug for it, it's seems impossible to go back to JUST using methadone.

Then there are folks like me who have been on it for five years and never looked back. What I wanted before addiction derailed my life, I have back. I remember what I felt like as an addict, before addiction and what I feel like now...I know what my choices are and i chose how I feel on methadone hands down. Not that I don't wish from time to time that I could still get high--it just doesn't rule my life now. Life on methadone is about as good as it gets for me....I have never regretted it and I hope I never do....I will stay on it until they find a way for me to feel this much better (not perfect, but better) without methadone.

[reddragon3668]

I fucking love done for pain mgmt but its a bitch to kick... that's why I won't be going back to it unless I have too.

[Deadfiend]

I chose it over Bupe because I clung to that sentence towards the back of certain editions of Naked Lunch where Burroughs talks about his negative experience with Demerol and how the transition to Methadone was life saving. He describes Methadone as being "...completely satisfying to the addict, an excellent painkiller, and at least as addicting as morphine." I wouldn't say it was completely satisfying but so far it isn't too bad.


At the time Burroughs was shooting pure amps of the stuff,and that will get you high as fuck if you could ever find it, and well long time use of iv Demerol will just kill you in the long run cause of the make up of the drug as made you know there's a cocaine-like stimulant effects that come with iv Demerol but also serotonin syndrome, seizures, delirium, dysphoria, tremors, death, that come with it, never meet a long time IV user. Burroughs was on done till the day he died but your talking about 1957 when he was on the shit that will give you as good as rush as shooting H,
""
my old friend Opium Jones. We were mighty close in tangier, 1957, shooting every hour 15 grains of methadone per day which equals 30 grains of morpine and that a lot of GOM"-The job W.S.B.
your not going to find that in any clinics around here. Just wanted to let you in on that...:cool:

Anyways I could go on and on about done cause it help me out a lot, but as anything it comes with its down sides also.......

[roxi*stardust]

Now this is just my opinion but I think alot of the reason so many people, especially ex and current Methadone users, have such strong feelings about it is because of the difficutly many have getting off of it. I mean many don't like the idea that they have beat their Heroin or other opiate addiction only to discover that it's not as easy to to get off Methadone as they were lead to believe. Alot of the information out there available to addicts could lead one to believe that Methadone is going to be easier to come off than their DOC. Then you have the fact that you know you are addicted to it just as you were your DOC and you have to jump thru hoops to get it, you know you are still addicted to something but you get nothing out of it once that intial glow wears off.

[prettypoppy]

Well, but the point of MMT is not that it takes less time to get off of than heroin--obviously that is NOT the case; it takes much longer. The POINT is that most people who end up on MMT were not able to get off heroin and STAY off heroin. I mean, you can toss anyone into a locked room for 3-5 days and get them through heroin WD's and yes, that is way quicker than the many months it takes to successfully and properly taper off methadone without making yourself sick, but that isn't really the issue for most of us. The issue is the horrible brain itch for opiates.

For me, methadone scratches that itch, leaving me neither high nor depressed, but normal. I never thought that would be enough--I wante dto be high--but it has turned out that it IS enough, most of the time. Very seldom do I find myself wishing I could get high, and when I do, it goes away easily. It's just weird, the way it works.

[Saint]

Done is a weird drug. I love it in the sense it saved my life after almost 18 years of IV-heroin use. And I also love those first few weeks on it where you feel great and buzzed.. the honeymoonperiod.

When your addiction is relatively short - say less than 5 years - it really isn't al that hard to come off with a slow taper and a lot of willpower. I didn't have any trouble when I came off the first time, but after 20 years of methadone AND heroin use I found it almost imposible to get off.
I mean, I always manage to taper to zero but that 'spark of life' never came back afterwards. Not even after a year.. and then came the painproblems which made it hell to work AND stay clean at the same time. Since done is about the best painkiller there is, I swear by it but at the same time I hate it, I hate its stigma and the blah gloomy feeling of not enjoying anything in life anymore, depression always sets in after a few months on done.
But it still beats living your life in pain..

[nick]

I think methadone is so polarising,not because of it's pharmacological action,but because of it's role as an official,state sanctioned opiate used for maintenance.If it wasn't widely used for maintenance it would be seen in another light.

[stick+lick]

I mean many don't like the idea that they have beat their Heroin or other opiate addiction only to discover that it's not as easy to to get off Methadone as they were lead to believe.

And here in lies the problem with looking at addiction as merely a dependency on drugs. I personally don't believe there is (currently) a way to "beat" an opiate addiction. It's with you for life. I may very well be able to stop using drugs...but my endless NEED to use them in an obsessive and controlling way will never leave me. ANYONE can stop using drugs...hell you could lock yourself in a room for the rest of your life if need be--you can stop EATING if you really wanted to too!....but no matter what an opiate addict does their brain is pretty much hard wired for life to be triggered and left wanting opiates the way a starving child wants bread. That is what I consider addiction...dependency is easy to "cure", addiction is impossible to cure. Methadone does NOT NOT NOT treat dependency--it continues it. Methadone treats ADDICTION. Until I seperated the two in my head it was impossible for me to be happy...because I kept thinking I could do better if I could just get past the detox.

For some reason people see this as being defeatist....but ONLY when it comes to addiction. If someone had schizophrenia and decided that they were going to find a way to "live with" their illness and get the most out of life they would be considered "Brave and courageous"......

I look at it this way......there are lots of people with bi-polar disorder that find themselves feeling "muted" on medication. Their lives are more stable, but their (as DF said) "spark" is gone. They decide to go off medication because they are willing to live with the depression end of bipolar in order to feel the "mania" phase in life....the choice they DON'T have, however, is to be completely "level" and medication free-because they have a brain dysfunction that makes that choice UN-AVAILABLE TO THEM.
The other thing I had to seperate out was that using drugs was not my problem......if i could use opiates (or cocaine) in a way that was controlled and pleasant I would in a second...I don't find the use of drugs morally wrong or degenrate. I am just not one of the lucky ones that can use on friday night (like going out to a bar with friends occasionally) and forget about it 'til the next time I DECIDE to do it again. Using drugs seems to be a "I GOTTA" instead of "I wanna".


So, figure out what you want, see if it's attainable with the body god gave you and move on from there. We all have to accept things about our lives and move forward. I will never be an olympian gymnast, for instance, it doesn't mean my life is no longer worth living.

[Duckfeet]

Part of my problem is always going to be political: I'm libertarian, and just cannot abide the fact that the gov't agrees w/me in theory: some opiate addicts will *never* be cured...we'll always crave opiates, and will never feel *really* happy off them, just "o.k." Yet they decide which opiate/s I'm to be allowed.

My anger is that against almost all studies and obvious modern experience, the government will not provide heroin maintenance for longterm *incorrigible* addicts like me...it provides methadone...my problems with methadone have nothing to do with whether or not I accept my "addiction" or not....fuck I accepted that long before most of you were born...my problem is more fundamental: methadone does not cure that problem for me: it gets rid of the withdrawal symptoms, and in exchange gives me physical and mental problems I can barely stand.

I know that we are all different, and that methadone "saves lives," and that many of the best friends I have do very well on it...*but* I don't do well on it, and not for lack of trying: I don't like it, and I hate that my choice always ends up being 12step programs or methadone/bupe (gov't mandated opiates) What kind of fucking choice is that?...

I am just about a perfect candidate for heroin-maintenance(by every criteria I've ever seen), and I know it.

But again, for whatever *physical* reasons, within a few weeks, methadone depresses me, gives me *all* of the problems of a serious opiate addiction (I personally don't buy into the vocabulary that finds huge differences between "dependence" and addiction: too self-serving for me) with none of the benefits...and I always caution people considering methadone (or bupe)maintenance, to look at both sides of this "argument" and realize it is a serious decision they are making....

[stick+lick]

I agree with you, DF.

I realize you accept your "problem"--and I also realize not everyone does well on methadone. I think it's insane for the medical world to realize something is a legit "disease" and then LIMIT the kinds of medications that can be used to treat it.....just look at how many different types of AD's there are out there! Which, by the way, also cause dependency issues.....it's insane to limit how well an addict does by limiting access to medications.

I will say one thing for myself though--one thing that makes methadone completely different than using dope or OC for ME ME ME.....I know without a doubt that using those medications will NEVER quiet my addiction...the "get high" properties are just too reinforcing for me. Even high as a kite my brain was thinking about how,when and how much more I could do. It's that component of addiction that made my life un-livable on those drugs.....and even long acting forms of these drugs (like kadian or OC orally) curbed my withdrawal, but didn't shut down that insessant voice in my head.

I guess what I am getting at is that its crazy that we even have to debate this at all--all of us---because we shouldn't have to push ourselves into choosing methadone because it's the ONLY choice---we should use it because it's the best choice FOR OURSELVES.

If we were diabetics we could sit here and tell each other how well we did on insulin, metformin or blah blah blah and blah....and I doubt anyone would find themselves venomous towards one form of treatment or another...and if you liked a treatment you'd probably be pretty grateful for it, but you wouldn't have to feel defensive if someone else did poorly on it either.

Unfortunately, here in the US, you have three choices when it comes to living with addiction to opiates:
use illictly
use methadone or bupe legally
Or don't treat the addiction and essentially learn to "live" with it's symptoms....which will hopefully lessen with time.
There is the other choice which is to get prescribed for pain--but many of us either don't have that option and or cant control our intake that way anyway. And the way the DEA and Drug Database groups are moving these days--the availability of chronic pain meds could soon be a thing of the past as well.



The only thing I disagree with is the difference between dependence and addiction. Methadone can't and NEVER will treat opiate dependence. You can't treat a dependency on a drug by creating another dependency.....but you CAN treat the symptoms of addiction which are mostly to do with triggers, craving, obsession and NEED. If you don't seperate those two things out I just don't see how you can honestly be truly accepting of your addiction. Dependency is very treatable and relatively easy to treat---addiction isn't.

[stick+lick]

methadone does not cure that problem for me: it gets rid of the withdrawal symptoms, and in exchange gives me physical and mental problems I can barely stand.
Then methadone isn't a good option for you....and tell people your story. PLEASE tell them...there is nothing worse than someone getting into methadone treatment and NEVER being told what it's all about...it doesn't make for good treatment outcomes.
But you seem to be going the other way lately, Duck. You seem to need to "hate" methadone. Why?

[Duckfeet]

Oh I don't 'hate' methadone:and I've given my general reasons for opposition to what I perceive as forced choices, and I think you know what they are. I only come out strongly against it, the same way *pro* methadonians come out strongly in favor of it... I like to make sure both sides are heard...so saying "I need to 'hate' methadone", u know, immediately presumes all kinds of stuff about 'needs' and methadone which I don't agree with...this is just an area I think we respectfully must 'disagree' on, but I don't buy into this being a "need" of mine, any more than you buy into my distaste for the vocabulary that methadone addicts "need" to use. ;) The words we use, already pretty much show where we stand, which is part of my opposition to them....but as long as neither 'side' of this debate, forces the other into using their vocabulary, I think we can kind of show people considering methadone maintenance, the opposing views...

Both sides, however, are touchy, and seem to want to characterize the other side's views...Me too....but stories are just stories, and "in my opinion" all we really have *are* "opinions" on this issue. I mean, I know, I know, there are all kinds of studies and research and stuff, but I just suspect it all, as often citing 'studies' and such, just drifts into obscurantism as a debating tactic....and I go more on the simple stuff: Methadone doesn't work for everybody...

I have good friends who have taught me about the positive power of methadone in their lives...and those of us with negative experience do share our stories, and I try to be as honest as I can be, recognizing always my own inconsistencies, and how futile it is to try to keep singleminded view of opiates, when so much of my life has been held hostage to these drugs I love so much for what they've done for me, and hate so much for what they've done to me...


Then methadone isn't a good option for you....and tell people your story. PLEASE tell them...there is nothing worse than someone getting into methadone treatment and NEVER being told what it's all about...it doesn't make for good treatment outcomes.
But you seem to be going the other way lately, Duck. You seem to need to "hate" methadone. Why?

[stick+lick]

I get it. Completely. I wish that treatment for addiction wasn't so POLARIZING to begin with--it makes no sense at all....to have to defend your choice for treatment so much: either pro medication or NOT. It makes no sense that addiction treatment has un-attainable goals of perfection that most addicts (let alone the human race) can live up to. It makes no sense to call something a "disease" and then treat it completely different than you would any other disease. It makes no sense that the patients with this "problem-disease-illness-mental condition-weakness-whatever you want to label it" are so pitted against each other that progress is impossible.

and how futile it is to try to keep singleminded view of opiates, when so much of my life has been held hostage to these drugs I love so much for what they've done for me, and hate so much for what they've done to me...
YES!
Like if someone told me that I could go back in time and erase my first experience with opiate: Would I? Would I really want to miss out on an experience that affected my life so profoundly GOOD and BAD? Would I really want to miss out on FEELING that way...the way I imagine some people feel when they climb MT. Everest or run a freaking Marathon--only ten times as pleasurable. Why would I want to have NEVER felt that way?

And at the same time....if I could just go back to that moment, and maybe avoid it until I am old and gray and life is all about claiming those last few pleasures we have in life: MAYBE I wouldn't have had to struggle so hard to become happy........or MAYBE I could never have been happy UNTIL I experienced getting high. Who really knows>? Maybe i would have spent my whole life looking for something that made me feel that good and I never would have found it.

If that isn't a confounded crazy assed backwards way of saying "me likes to get high-and I have no regrets" I don't know what is! lol

[prettypoppy]

Very interesting thread--thanks, Duck and S&L. As you know, I come down on S&L's side of the story--methadone has been a positive for me. It has a price, though--both physically and situationally (I want to go to Africa someday and see the mountain gorillas--can't do that on methadone, at least not now). And in all reality, what S&L said gives me a greater understanding of Duck's situation, too--regarding methadone "taking the spark out", and having to make a decision on what side of that equation you want to come down on and how the pros and cons weigh out for you individually. I have known several people who stopped taking their bipolar meds because even though life was easier and more stable on their meds, the bright spark was gone and that was too depressing for them to live with full time.

I think I might do better on a different drug myself. Methadone, while it takes away the cravings and keeps me stable and relatively happy, doesn't give me the energy I need--and I am talking about just normal energy here, not super-energy--which I think is a part of my endorphin deficiency and was better rectified with other meds (hydrocodone). For me, this is the better choice of what is available to me at this point in my life--I have kids, I can't be getting arrested and going to jail, and it's a lot better than going without anything. But it's not perfect.

[Duckfeet]

Well, most people on here don't know how much your personal patience and kindness towards me, on another forum, almost three years ago,, when I just began this last 'run' are why I see methadone in a new and constantly evolving light. And actually hearing very convincing testimonials from people who had been on methadone at higher doses.

All I knew about methadone, came out of "the old days", when it was pretty much limited to innner city, free, county methadone clinics, for longtime heroin addicts who were pretty much at "the end of the line..."

Much of my frustration is obviously due to the fact that in the end, in this area, AA had failed me, and that left me hopeless in a way I'd never felt hopeless before, and also alone, in a way I also was unused to: I wasn't really a hardcore junky anymore, and felt bitter and betrayed that AA had not "protected" me, the same as last "slip" back in 1994...

But people like you, and S&L here, who don't clobber me for my obvious insecurities and failures in this area keep me going, and keep me hopeful...I know much of my misplaced irritation w/methadone maintenance, is simply because I don't have another choice...someone like me would always do better on some sort of opiate therapy, and I never rule out the possibility of that happening...but anyway, my friend, I'm always glad to see you posting on here, and wish you the best...

Very interesting thread--thanks, Duck and S&L. As you know, I come down on S&L's side of the story--methadone has been a positive for me. It has a price, though--both physically and situationally (I want to go to Africa someday and see the mountain gorillas--can't do that on methadone, at least not now). And in all reality, what S&L said gives me a greater understanding of Duck's situation, too--regarding methadone "taking the spark out", and having to make a decision on what side of that equation you want to come down on and how the pros and cons weigh out for you individually. I have known several people who stopped taking their bipolar meds because even though life was easier and more stable on their meds, the bright spark was gone and that was too depressing for them to live with full time.

I think I might do better on a different drug myself. Methadone, while it takes away the cravings and keeps me stable and relatively happy, doesn't give me the energy I need--and I am talking about just normal energy here, not super-energy--which I think is a part of my endorphin deficiency and was better rectified with other meds (hydrocodone). For me, this is the better choice of what is available to me at this point in my life--I have kids, I can't be getting arrested and going to jail, and it's a lot better than going without anything. But it's not perfect.

[chassa2005]

Thanks everyone for giving me your advice, really appreciate it. Also, I have a much, much better appreciation of the potential advantages and disadvantages of staying with the Done. Oh and Deadfriend I think it was, thanks for clarifying Burroughs's precise method of dolophine use. I knew he used ampules but I bought that line fed us by most clinics that methadone is the same whether injected or swallowed. But yeah, it probably bears no comparison hey.

I do find these early days honeymoon like. But my H use had a honeymoon period too. I'm on 50 mg and rising. My intention was to get on it so that it could hold me together in between shots. But I haven't had the gear since I started so I guess it has been something of a success...so far. But it is just replacing one with the other, although I don't plan on being on the Done for longer than say a couple of years. Famous last words? Well I hope not given its interminable withdrawals.

On the other topic, I've never really seen opiate use as a medical problem. I don't really know how to classify it to be honest. It certainly should not be illegal. It is constipating but chronic opiate use is not carcinogenic and not damaging to any organs, as far as I understand it. All the problems associated with it appear to stem from its illegality and consequent high price. If it was dirt cheap, available in a wide range of forms (heroin, morphine, hydromorphone, oxycodone etc), in a wide range of concentrations, and for sale in a wide variety of places, our society would be so much the better for it. I don't see it as a moral problem either really. Just a lifestyle choice is all. But here in Australia, as in America, opiate use occupies the curious position of being considered both a medical problem and a crime problem. And in these conditions I agree with duckfeet that heroin maintenance would be much more successful. Heck, even morphine injections would be alright.

Anyway thanks again to everyone who posted. It's been a big help.

[stick+lick]

All the problems associated with it appear to stem from its illegality and consequent high price. If it was dirt cheap, available in a wide range of forms (heroin, morphine, hydromorphone, oxycodone etc), in a wide range of concentrations, and for sale in a wide variety of places, our society would be so much the better for it. I don't see it as a moral problem either really.

Maybe this is part of the "key" to why methadone works so well for some and not others....I still believe (and always will until science proves me wrong) that we are talking about two very specific "illnesses" when we talk about OPIATE addiction. Not only that but those two conditions can come together, seperate or to varying degrees of debilitation.

I think there are people with PRIMARY endorphin dysfunction depression and then there is a seperate condition that is "addiction" which is more about obsession, than function. It's has endless ways to look at it, but basically what it comes down to for ME is this: there are people who function quite well on opioids like heroin and for them its just a means to an end to feel ok. Then I think there are people like me who are so hardwired to seek pleasure in opiate (or some other form) that once they find the "pleasure" they like their entire lives become about it and only it. The problem for me was that my "obsession" was opiates and by using them I damaged my endordin function and now I have both problems. So the only way to treat ONE without aggrivating the other is to find a drug that gives me no pleasure to use, but makes me feel human at the same time.

In other words, the legalities weren't my only problems with drug use. I would have gone "nuts" over opiates wether it was illegal or not....but making it legal would have at least prevented me from doing crazy things to continue my use so I will always believe in legalization.


LOL, I hope like heck we didn't make it harder than it already was to wrap your mind around this....but really, what more can we say than see how it works for YOU and go from there?

Take care!