Types of Substances and Their Treatments

Information on Methadone Maintenance Treatment

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Methadone is used as a medication for the patients to a certain amount consumed either by orally or through injection in Methadone maintenance Treatment.

Effective Methadone Treatment for Drug Use


Introduction

During the detoxification of the patient some sort of medication is given. It is helpful in blockage of withdrawal symptoms. The drug use in this treatment is methadone.

Definition

Methadone treatment is defined as a process in which some amount of methadone is given as oral solution or by injection during detoxification.

Process

In this process dose of methadone is given from 20 to 40 mg in form of 2.5 to 10 mg tablet or in form of injection to ease down the withdrawal symptoms. The dose quantity is reduced 10% initially and 3% in remaining weeks of treatment. This process is known as tapering.

Precautions and Risks

In this treatment lowest effective dosage should be given to patient. The patient suffering from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, CNS depression, and this drug decreases their respiratory drive in that case alternative non-opioid is considered. As methadone is itself a drug and use as an alternative to heroin, it also work as heroin in patient’s body and its dose is reduced so that patient get freedom from addiction but in mean while patient got addiction of this drug. So clonidine is given as substitute of methadone and it is used for long-term treatment of heroin addiction.

Result

The result in this case is a mix bag of both agreement and disagreement. As amount of dosage is optimum. Then patient is defiantly going to recover. More over its benefit to cost ratio is 4.86. But when it comes to patient they don’t like the treatment and suffers from stigma and dislikes the whole system of treatment.