Methadone Detox Methadone Withdrawal Symptoms Suboxone

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Medically Managing Withdrawal Symptoms of Methadone Detox

For most of the last century, the ability of doctors and treatment centers to help opiate addicts has been limited by the federal government. The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, originally designed as a tax act, was interpreted by the Supreme Court to prohibit the prescription of opiates to opiate addicts, even in the course of their treatment. From then on, an entire line of practice - the tapering of opiate dosage to ease the pain of withdrawal - was against the law.

One exception was methadone. When used properly, methadone can be an effective treatment for opiate addiction. However, the idea of maintaining addicts on a substitute drug led the Federal Government to restrict methadone so tight that the drug can only be prescribed by specific clinics. These clinics vary widely in the quality of care they provide. In addition, methadone causes euphoria (a high), which has led to some addicts using methadone clinics to subsidize their opiate addiction and abuse methadone. Also, methadone maintenance clients eventually reach a point where it is nearly impossible to ever successfully detox from the methadone, as its withdrawal symptoms have been reported to be 10 times more severe than those of heroin and lasting sometimes as long as 3 to 4 months in duration, compared to the 7 to 10 days of withdrawal symptoms that an average heroin addiction can produce. The combination of these factors has limited the effectiveness of methadone not only for maintenance, but for methadone detox as well.

The "Drug Abuse Treatment Act of 2000" allows the prescription of Suboxone to opiate addicts to ease the symptoms of methadone withdrawal. Whereas drugs like morphine, heroin and methadone are opioid receptor agonist - meaning they fully bind opioid receptors - buprenorphine is a partial opioid receptor agonist. This gives Suboxone the ability to relieve the symptoms of opiate withdrawal without producing the euphoria (high) of the full agonist drugs like methadone. For the first time, physicians and detox centers can use Suboxone to provide a more comfortable methadone detox for addicted patients.

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ORANGE COUNTY DETOX

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