gunsmoke on 25/7/2012 at 13:41

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As a former methadone patient for 11 years (and a former advocate) now that I am free and clear of it, it was WORSE than heroin. Way worse. It tethers you to your clinic. You have to be there every day to dose the few hours they choose to be open. It has taken me 2+ hours waiting in line, not to mention the 40 minute commute. Try working a normal job like that. The withdrawal is a million times worse.

I went through 3 solid months of fucked up withdrawals. I had a heart attack on the 4th day. At 37. If it wasn't for me having a girlfriend and best friend (as well as an LPN neighbor who worked in clinics in NY to keep a medical eye on me) who made sure I had someone sitting right next to me when my breathing got so shallow it caused hypoxia, checked my pulse, and could carry me to puke, I'd be fucked.

The clinics end up as just a big junky reunion. Everyone either still gets high, or has switched to shooting coke, popping Xanax, etc... The dealers are in the parking lot, the dopers are telling you who has the good shit, and the counseling is nearly non-existent. It is an exercise in white knuckling through your addiction instead of allowing any sort of recovery and healing.

Oh yeah, and Methadone changes every facet of your existence. You are high. Your taste, smell, touch are all numbed. Your temper is fucked. You sweat like a pig. You still nod out. To the point where at least 20 people (most of whom knew nothing about my being on the clinic) told me and my girlfriend just how much better I looked, how super mellow and likeable I had become. One neighbor thought I got plastic surgery 'cause I looked so much healthier. My girlfriend says it is like having the old me from 20 years ago back for the first time.

I have been on 5 clinics in all corners of the US, it isn't just the one. Watch Methadonia (it's on Netflix). I watched it a few years ago when I still dosed and was super pissed about it 'making Methadone out to be the devil'. Watching it again last week, my opinion was the complete opposite. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of not only big city clinics like the ones I saw in NY, DC, and Detroit, but also small-town clinics like Charleston, SC, and here in Columbus, OH.

My suggestion: allow an option for dopers to get into a detox facility with no insurance. We tried over 100 facilities. None would take less than $8,000 cash up front. No payment plans, no sliding-scale, just cash. Or at least just change the culture of methadone clinics. Instead of them pumping you with way more juice than any human needs, telling the clients this is a lifetime plan, keeping the doses low and beginning weaning the second they get stable. Junkies can't stand discomfort. The second they even think they have a withdrawal symptom they use it as an excuse to get fixed. Don't feed into it by cranking their doses the second they whine. Give them enough to take the edge off and have them off completely quick fast.

Sorry to rant, but it all sounds like a great idea in theory. Put into practice it just perpetuates/escalates the actual problem. People usually end up making their habit worse, due to the ungodly amounts of dope it takes to counteract the Methadone withdrawal.

DDL on 25/7/2012 at 14:48

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Gunny: interesting to hear a personal experience, so thanks for that.

I think it's fairly well publicised now that methadone is outright worse than heroin (more addictive, worse withdrawal, -hell, easier to take, too). I suspect it pretty much got selected because...well, "ORAL DOSING, ALSO NOT HEROIN": I guess the idea of a clean-up clinic is easier to sell when it's not actually administering the exact same drug as is causing the addiction in the first place, even if it actually transpires that it's getting you addicted to a worse drug instead.

So while I'm not surprised, I'm still sorry you had such a shitty time. :erg:


I guess I'm thinking that while a clinic won't necessarily be an ideal situation, I can't really see why access to clean needles and clean drugs would make things worse. The idea would be, at least initially, to get access to a notoriously difficult to reach group of people (because drug addicts are not generally the most open people about their drug addictions, especially for things like smack): you could get a better idea of numbers, administer medical care, and prevent/reduce people shooting up dodgy black tar heroin using secondhand needles.
As a secondary goal, you'd at least partly cut the dealers out of the market. It wouldn't happen overnight, but if you're jonesing for a fix and you can either

-steal a TV, sell it, then buy from your pusher, or
-get it for free from a clinic

then every person who chooses the latter is a step in the right direction. Drug dealers are massively incentivised to get people as hooked as possible, ideally on the most expensive drugs, and prohibition manifestly doesn't work. Instead of spending millions making their lives difficult, we should just spend that money undercutting them completely.

But yes, your suggestion of detox clinics is also good (though I'm not even going to touch the clusterfuck that is the US insurance system), I was merely thinking of ways to make existing drug addicts less of a problem, rather than actually wean them off (not least because not all of them WANT to be weaned off). My thinking is that drug addicts will ALWAYS be a problem, but that in a system with legalised yet controlled access to drugs, that problem is vastly more managable. And involves fewer murders in mexico.

Vivian on 26/7/2012 at 08:50

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personally, I would just like to be able to buy weed without funding the local fucking gangsters. I don't think there's really any solid arguments left against legalizing weed. Coke and MDMA, that's a bit of a different issue. MDMA, I cant see how legalising it would cause anything but a strong rise in drunk people doing MDMA. Happens all the time anyway, it's dirt cheap, and it gets you hilariously fucked up. I'm pretty certain that the only thing that stops people ODing on coke more often is simply running out of money to buy more, or crossing some threshold for the evening in terms of cash-down-bog. It's really not that hard to get hold of it, in London at least, but you do have to be comfortable with doing something really illegal.

So, I guess the issue is the difference between making something legal, and making something easily available. Legal hard drugs have the advantage of purity and taxability, and removing pretty much THE major source of income for organised crime. They have the potential problem of being greatly more accessible, and so causing more people to probably OD and die (I imagine for the straights, legalising something like coke would cause a situation similar to when you start to get old enough to drink booze, people would start getting all macho about it and probably do waay too much). So, which is the worse thing, gangsters or drug-deaths/addiction problems?

heywood on 26/7/2012 at 11:55

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Decriminalization should help America's incarceration problem, but it does nothing to slow the demand for drugs so it doesn't help Mexico's problem.

If more drugs are commercialized and made widely available, as Colorado has done with cannibis, that will move production into the US which will help Mexico's problem. But I can't see people supporting the legal production and distribution of harder drugs for widespread recreational use (e.g. meth, coke, opiates). And regulation alone won't make a difference. If you can't control the current black market, it doesn't matter much whether you change the regulations.

I don't know how much cannibis contributes to the overall Mexico drug trade, but probably enough to reduce the scope of the problem but not enough to solve it. And I don't see what Mexico can really do besides making it harder for the cartels to operate, which won't eliminate the trade but may drive it elsewhere so it becomes somebody else's problem. Similarly, the US could put even more resources into border enforcement, but the supply routes will just go elsewhere.

As long as the demand exists, somebody will find a way to supply it. And there aren't many effective ways to reduce demand, particularly in relatively free, relatively prosperous cultures. It's one of the world's most intractable problems.

heywood on 26/7/2012 at 12:28

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See the first sentence of my post above.

EDIT: Sorry, that was unnecessarily terse. To elaborate, I think decriminalizing or legalizing possession will alleviate over-burdened criminal justice and prison systems. It would help even if they stopped counting minor drugs offenses as a "third strike". But it won't reduce demand. If anything, it will increase demand. So there will still be an illegal drugs trade and black market and all the criminal activity that goes along with it (turf wars, gang violence, smuggling, etc.) both in Mexico and the US. The black market and all its ills won't go away unless you create a legit market to replace it, i.e. commercialization. I can't see doing that for hard drugs because it will result in even more addicts. And addicts will still wreck families, drain public resources, and commit collateral crimes like stealing for drug money, getting violent while high, and so on. So while I'm in favor of decriminalization or even legalization of certain drugs (the less damaging & addictive ones) it's far, far from being a solution to the problem.