Drug Methadone

Question by TheseBlueEyesWillBreakYourHeart: How easy is it to obtain a prescription for Methadone?
I am not asking so that I can get some…
Someone dear to me has just passed away. He was a cocaine addict and experienced a lot of back pain. After he died I found out he had been taking Methadone for 3 days. He had more than 100 pills prescribed by his doctor. He basically just stopped breathing in his sleep and his heart failed. Why would his doctor prescribe him Methadone when a simple blood test would confirm he occasionally takes drugs? I thought patients on Methadone were monitored not handed hundreds of pills…

Best answer:

Answer by hazaamohammed
Methadone could help cocaine addicts: study

Tom Spears
Canwest News Service
11.25.08

Methadone, adrugusedformanyyears to treat heroin addiction, also appears to work well against cocaine addiction, a new Canadian study suggests.

Psychologist Francesco Leri of the University of Guelph has been making rats addicted to cocaine, and then treating them with methadone.

Most of the rats responded well, he says. They lost their powerful urge for cocaine and, in addition, their brains “re-set” themselves into the same pattern that existed before they first used cocaine.

“It can be done tomorrow with humans, and should be done tomorrow,” Leri said.

That’s because methadone–unlike some new drug — already exists as a tested drug, with clear prescription rules and clinical staff trained in giving it out.

“There is an entire system that is already in place for the employment of methadone,” that could be used for cocaine addicts, Leri said.

He said the U. S. National Institute for Drug Abuse is looking at using methadone– or a similar drug, such as buprenorphine– in a clinical setting.

The idea came up because, in real life, people mix drugs.

There’s no such thing as a”pure heroin addict,” he said.

“The norm is people who are addicted to opiates, so heroin or prescription opiates, and they co-abuse cocaine at the same time.”

Researchers have wondered what happens to addicts’ cocaine problem when they start taking methadone for the heroin addiction.

But it’s hard to separate the two addictions in humans.

In his Guelph lab, Leri worked on rats with a cocaine addiction, but no exposure to heroin.

The cocaine-addicted rats in his lab didn’t get a cocaine high on methadone, he said.

Instead, “The methadone may be able to curb the desire that they have for that drug (cocaine).”

In addition, methadone actually reversed changes in the rats’ brains that werecausedbycocaine, andareknownto play a key role in addictive behaviour.

“What’s interesting is that, among the rats given cocaine and then methadone, these regions of the brain looked similar to how they appeared in the rats that were never exposed to cocaine.

“We feel we may have the hope of resetting the brains of some individuals to a type of normality,” he said.

“I think it should be tried, and I guarantee you there will be some individuals –not everybody–who will do better on methadone, who will be stabilized on methadone.”

Methadone could be one tool to help a person who is motivated to stop taking cocaine, the psychologist says.

“You cannot give methadone left and right and hope that it is going to work. You need to work with individuals who, in addiction to social support, in addition to cognitive therapy, will need something to curb their desire” for cocaine.

The study is published in European Neuropsychopharmacology, a research journal

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