Pubdate: Sun, 25 Mar 2007
Source: Salisbury Post (NC)
Copyright: 2007 Post Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.salisburypost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/380
Author: Scott Jenkins
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)

METHADONE CAN WEAN ADDICTS OFF OTHER DRUGS, HELP WITH PAIN

Methadone is a synthetic opiate. German scientists created the drug 
in 1937 as an easier-to-administer and less potentially addictive 
alternative to morphine to control pain during and after surgery.

Eli Lilly and Co. introduced methadone in the U.S. in 1947 as a 
painkiller, but it became widely used, and best known, decades later 
as a drug for weaning addicts off heroin.

Since the late 1990s, doctors have increasingly prescribed methadone 
to patients who suffer from chronic or severe pain, and experts say 
that widening availability has led to a rising death toll from 
methadone overdoses. Nationally, overdose deaths involving methadone 
rose from 831 in 1999 to 4,031 in 2004, according to the most recent 
information available from the National Center for Health Statistics.

In North Carolina, methadone-related deaths rose nearly 10-fold 
between 1999 and 2006. And in Rowan County, the drug was a factor in 
almost half the overdose deaths between 2003 and 2005.

People who study overdose deaths and perform toxicology tests say 
very few people are overdosing on the liquid form of the drug given 
in methadone clinics. The vast majority are dying after taking too 
much of the prescription version, they say.

A lot of those deaths, experts say, result from people taking 
prescription drugs that aren't theirs for pain, or looking for a way 
to a high, which methadone doesn't produce like other drugs.

But Kay Sanford, a public health epidemiologist in the Injury and 
Violence Prevention Branch of the state Division of Public Health, 
said that even patients legitimately prescribed methadone for pain 
need to be under close medical supervision while getting used to the 
drug, which reacts differently in different people.

Typical side effects of methadone include drowsiness and respiratory 
depression.

In a public health advisory last year, the Food and Drug 
Administration said signs of overdose may include trouble breathing 
or shallow breathing, extreme tiredness or sleepiness, blurred 
vision, inability to think, talk or walk normally and feeling faint, 
dizzy or confused.

Sanford said a person who has overdosed on methadone might also be 
snoring when he usually does not, a sign that it's getting hard to 
breathe. Sanford said doctors need to stress to patients to keep 
their prescriptions secure, especially if they have children or teens 
in the house. "They need to tell patients that even a small dose of 
methadone can be fatal to kids or teenagers," she said.

Pharmacists dispensing methadone should ask patients if they have 
contact with children and adolescents and explain the dangers, she 
said. Patients taking methadone need to be aware of its possible 
hazards and the potentially lethal consequences of not following a 
doctor's instructions, Sanford said.

"Some pills are more lethal than others, and methadone appears to be 
more lethal than many narcotics," she said. "... Even an extra pill 
or two of methadone can be lethal."

And for children and teenagers, she said, avoiding death by overdose 
is "very simple: If you don't use drugs, don't start. If you do use 
drugs, stop, get help."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman