Berlin, like many big cities has a heroin problem. People presenting for help are being prescribed opioid replacement therapy (ORT) - a form of medication assisted treatment (MAT) in greater numbers. That’s a good thing isn’t it? Yes, but it's not completely straightforward. A lot depends on what the professional and their patient think is … Continue reading Stuck on Methadone
Tag: methadone
Most popular posts of 2015 – #9 – Opiate-addicted Parents in Methadone Treatment: Long-term Recovery, Health and Family Relationships
I recently came across this 10 year follow-up of parents in methadone treatment and their children from 2011. Here's a review of their outcomes. First, here's their definition of recovery: Recovery status was based on recent drug use, history of drug problems, and history of incarceration. Long-term recovery was defined as no recent drug use (self-report … Continue reading Most popular posts of 2015 – #9 – Opiate-addicted Parents in Methadone Treatment: Long-term Recovery, Health and Family Relationships
Don’t believe the hype
About that Huffington Post article covering Obama's addiction speech a few weeks ago. ALLEGATION FACT FACT A Huffington Post investigation published in January found that the treatment industry overwhelmingly resists a medication-assisted model based on decades-old beliefs about sobriety that have been passed down by those in recovery, but have never been rigorously tested. Suboxone is the number 39 … Continue reading Don’t believe the hype
Opiate-addicted Parents in Methadone Treatment: Long-term Recovery, Health and Family Relationships
I recently came across this 10 year follow-up of parents in methadone treatment and their children from 2011. Here's a review of their outcomes. First, here's their definition of recovery: Recovery status was based on recent drug use, history of drug problems, and history of incarceration. Long-term recovery was defined as no recent drug use (self-report … Continue reading Opiate-addicted Parents in Methadone Treatment: Long-term Recovery, Health and Family Relationships
Stuck on Methadone
DJ Mac reviews a recent German paper looking into why patients stay on methadone. His review is easily the best post I've read on the complicated relationship between methadone and recovery. Read the whole post. The paper's starting point: The paper outlines that retention in ORT is not great, with just over half of patients … Continue reading Stuck on Methadone
Buprenorphine Overseas
“The history of the treatment of narcotic withdrawal is a long and dishonorable one. The trail is strewn with cures enthusiastically received and then quietly discarded when they turned out to be relatively ineffective or even worse, productive of greater morbidity and mortality… Any claim for a new method should be put forward modestly and … Continue reading Buprenorphine Overseas
Pediatric use of buprenorphine
Drugfree.org has a piece advocating more use of buprenorphine with children. Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) for opioid dependence is a science-based and proven-effective option for teens and young adults. It should be administered with age appropriate psychosocial therapy and drug testing. Unfortunately, it has been subject to controversy and stigma. Yet the neuroscience of addiction and … Continue reading Pediatric use of buprenorphine
no hint of opinion here
To me, the most important line in the NY Times Suboxone series was this one, "[Dr. Sullivan] considered opioid addiction "a hopeless disease'". We believe that maintenance approaches are rooted in the belief that most opiate addicts are not capable of recovering in the same manner that doctors recover. Most of the arguments for maintenance treatments … Continue reading no hint of opinion here
Methadone, technology and outcomes
Substance Matters has a post about the use of new technologies in methadone maintenance. Patients who use a web-based intervention (TES) instead of half of their traditional counseling did better than those with traditional counseling as part of their methadone treatment. It provokes important questions about the usefulness of new technologies and how they might … Continue reading Methadone, technology and outcomes
Methadone with and without counseling
Drug and Alcohol Findings reviews research on the impact of counseling for methadone patients. While across the board there was significant improvement, being assigned to standard/enhanced versus interim (no counseling) programmes did not further improve retention, illicit drug use and related problems, or make much difference to criminal activity. There was no evidence that interim … Continue reading Methadone with and without counseling
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