Prescription Drug Addiction: Methadone Is The No. 1 Killer

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http://media.novusdetox.com/news.php?include=136669

 

08/25/2008

 

The heroin-like painkiller methadone is the fastest-growing cause of

narcotic deaths, according to federal government statistics, and ranks

high among drugs implicated in the soaring rates of prescription drug

addiction across the country.

 

Methadone, which for decades has been used to replace heroin as an

addiction treatment, now causes more than twice as many deaths as

heroin itself. And because it is potent and long-lasting, and far less

expensive than other prescription painkillers, it has become more and

more popular among family physicians and other health care providers

who hand it out for all kinds of chronic pain.

 

But the problem, say experts, is that doctors are not sufficiently

educated in narcotics, and methadone is particularly complex and

deadly. No two people respond to methadone in the same way, so where

one patient might seem okay, another can die on the same dosage. And

if it doesn't kill the patient, it can rapidly lead to dependence and

wind up in a full-blown, life-altering prescription drug addiction.

 

In some areas of the country, methadone deaths now surpass deaths from

oxycodone painkillers such as OxyContin and Percocet and hydrocodone

painkillers such as Vicodin and Lortab. But whereas the majority of

deaths from these other narcotic painkillers come from illicit abuse

of the drugs, nearly half of all deaths from methadone result from

taking methadone " as directed " on legitimate prescriptions.

 

Labeling directions for methadone were dangerously incorrect for

decades, and were not updated until late 2006, long after thousands of

cases of prescription drug addiction and death were reported. The FDA,

woefully lax in dealing with physicians' ignorance about the using the

drug properly, failed to recognize the dangers that more widespread

prescribing could bring about. Since the new labeling information is

only partially helpful, the FDA may require doctors to take special

classes on prescribing narcotics and methadone in particular.

 

According to the DEA, from 1998 to 2006 the number of methadone

prescriptions have increased by 700 percent, inundating parts of the

country where it had rarely been seen. Shipments of methadone across

the country from manufacture through commercial distribution channels,

which are tracked by the DEA, increased by 500 percent.

 

The result has been massive increases in methadone-related deaths,

which the feds say increased even more than the shipments. In Utah,

where prescription drug addiction is a state-wide epidemic, supplies

of methadone shipping into the state increased six-fold in the five

years between 1997 and 2002, but deaths from methadone increased 15-fold.

 

In Florida, where prescription drug addiction is also ravaging the

population, meticulously-kept death statistics reveal that methadone

deaths more than doubled in a space of just four years, jumping from

367 deaths in 2003 to 785 deaths in 2007.

 

It's clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that methadone, in spite of

its perceived power to help relieve serious chronic pain, is not the

ideal solution. The FDA needs to assign a higher priority to getting

America's physicians into advanced education classes on narcotics.

 

Even better, health care providers who really want to help their pain

patients find relief, and avoid the risk of killing or addicting them,

should investigate safer alternative treatments instead of

automatically reaching for the prescription pad. And for those already

suffering from narcotic prescription drug addiction, medical drug

detox is the proper solution.