Posted by Elizabeth on January 6, 2002, at 22:33:30
In reply to Re: methadone?, posted by stjames on January 5, 2002, at 20:53:06
> > If people are led to believe that methadone won't get them high or addicted or cause motor impairment, they are liable to exercise less caution about the way they use it. I think it's important that people not be misinformed about drugs that they might be taking.
>
> You might want to look at some studiesI'm sorry -- I must not be communicating my point very well. You're saying things about methadone which apply only to its specific use in MMT programs, but which might be taken (mistakenly) as applying to methadone in general. I understand that what you have to say about methadone is true in the case of MMT, but that's a special case. This thread wasn't about MMT at all; as such, making claims about MMT as though they applied to methadone in general seems like a bad idea. For an opioid-naive person to take methadone under the assumption that it won't get them high or addicted, or cause motor impairment, would be potentially dangerous, since in nontolerant persons, methadone has the potential to cause any or all of these effects.
> MMT is what I know, that is why I mention it.
Then you should know that what you know about MMT does not apply to other ways that methadone is used.
> These reaction tests indicate to me that once stable on a dose one is not impaired.
You're assuming that a person taking methadone for some other purpose (such as depression or nociceptive pain) will reach a stable dose. It's not clear what happens when people take opioids for depression (it seems that some are able to reach a stable dose but others develop tolerance and must therefore keep increasing the dose), but people taking methadone for pain do become tolerant, as do patients taking other opioids for pain. Methadone causes tolerance (or doesn't cause it) in the same way that other opioids do. It does not have some novel pharmacological property that makes it safer.
> I don't see a connection to high and dependance, ie, just because you don't get high from something does not mean dependance will not happen.
I didn't say dependence; I said addiction. Pharmacologic dependence happens with many drugs (such as corticosteroids, antidepressants, and antihypertensives) that don't get people high, but that's not addiction (which, confusingly, is called "substance dependence" in DSM-IV).
> A quick check of the archive will show that many
> do think if one takes an opioid for a mental illness they are getting high so they feel better, that this is all that is happening, and it is bad. Many where I live feel the same about
> MMT, they are still just getting high and nothing has changed.That's true, but many people also have the reverse belief, that methadone is "okay" to give to addicts because it's "different" from other opioids. There are lots of misconceptions out there about methadone.
> Warning: I have ADD, expect tangents !
Expect the same on my end. :-) Seriously: tangents are cool, but it's important to let your readers know that your comments refer to the use of methadone in MMT, and not necessarily in other situations.
-elizabeth
poster:Elizabeth
thread:87700
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020103/msgs/89127.html