My recent letter to the editor regarding a need for more methadone treatment clinics was criticized by a local resident as "ridiculous" and "insane." To say that we should take away methadone clinics because, and I quote, "the best way to get hooked off drugs ... is to never start in the first place" is like saying we should stop trying to cure cancer in smokers. People are addicted, and they are going to continue to become addicted, because of sociological issues that seem far out of the reach of understanding for my editorial opponent. [continues 204 words]
Millions of Americans suffer daily from chronic pain due to cancer, nerve disorders, spine problems, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia and many other diseases. We suffer and cry, and live our lives in painful solitude because doctors and clinics in this country do not want to prescribe the medications that will take away our pain: narcotics or opiates like methadone, fentanyl, and oxycodone. Recent press coverage has made a mockery of the actual pain treatment scenario. Many articles leave the reader with the impression that drugs like oxycontin are killing people in epidemic proportions. Readers may also get the idea that prescribing powerful drugs for chronic pain is causing an addiction crisis in this country. But most addicts are not chronic pain patients, but recreational drug users. The media has participated in the vilification of prescription drugs, the Drug Enforcement Administration has focused it's scrutiny on doctors who prescribe them and the medical community has not taken a stand to fight for patients' rights. I believe that doctors are too quick to refuse treatment when patients cannot immediately "prove" that they have a pain-causing condition. While I completely empathize with doctors who are afraid of law enforcement penalties, it is common medical knowledge that opiate control for pain is effective and does not lead to addiction in the majority of cases. If more doctors and health care professionals stood up for this cause, local and national government would have no choice but to see in the injustice in the bias against these medications. [continues 235 words]
As an online reader of The Register-Herald, I came across the letter "Methadone clinics are a Band-Aid." The writer is sorely mistaken and needs to understand the facts of addiction and methadone ... Addicts who go to methadone clinics, for the most part, are there to get better. A few bad apples who go to "get high" are absolutely weeded out. No methadone clinic gives out the drug blindly without watching the progress of the user. The point of methadone clinics is not to "get people high." The general procedure is that methadone is prescribed first in higher doses, to alleviate withdrawal, and then titrated down to eventually no methadone. Very few addicts will remain on methadone indefinitely - this is simply not how clinics operate. [continues 137 words]
