Plainly individuals are lastly getting the purpose about methadone being a really harmful drug. Though it has been prescribed as a painkiller for many years, prescriptions have elevated by 715 % in the previous few years – and a rise in methadone-related deaths and the variety of individuals needing drug detox and drug rehab for dependancy have adopted.
Why the sudden enhance in methadone prescriptions? When Purdue Pharma developed OxyContin, they have been allegedly filling a necessity – OxyContin was imagined to be much less addictive and susceptible to abuse than the painkillers already available on the market. Nevertheless, as soon as the medical group noticed that Purdue was mendacity, extra docs beginning prescribing methadone as a painkiller rather than OxyContin.
Though not the painkiller of alternative, methadone moved right into a extra outstanding place. Hospitals, docs and pharmacies began shopping for extra of it – producers shipped 6.6 million grams of methadone in 2006, up from 1.9 million in 2001 – and the dying toll began to climb.
In keeping with the Nationwide Drug Intelligence Heart, fewer than 1000 individuals died of methadone overdose in 1999, 3849 died of overdose in 2004 and, though the ultimate figures aren’t in but, the data present that the development continued in 2006. What number of of those lives may have been saved by drug detox?
Deaths from methadone are additionally larger than these involving different opiate or opioid pharmaceuticals – morphine, OxyContin and Vicodin, for instance – solely elevated by 90 % over the identical time frame. The truth is, the dying toll from heroin is lower than half that of methadone regardless that there are extra individuals taking heroin.
Methadone can be quite a bit cheaper than different painkillers – which does not make Large Pharma completely satisfied, however does add to the drug’s enchantment.
Has the prescription painkiller arsenal been exhausted? We went via a bunch of painkillers previous to OxyContin and so they have been too harmful. Then we went via Buy oxycontin in Sweden and it was too harmful. Now we’re utilizing methadone and it, too, is proving too harmful.
Are we epitomizing Einstein’s definition of stupidity – doing the identical factor again and again and anticipating completely different outcomes? Maybe the perfect transfer is drug detox program and probably drug rehab for all of those that’ve change into hooked on or depending on prescription painkillers – then get busy discovering some drug-free options that will not kill us.