Sometimes people who are not necessarily into illegal street drugs can be prescribed Methadone by their doctor or a hospital. This happens sometimes because they have a chronic pain condition that is so severe that lessor painkillers cannot control the pain for them. It is also the case sometimes where people will take a pain pill for their pain, but it wears off much to quickly due to the high intensity of their pain. In cases such as these, a doctor might prescribe Methadone because it tends to stick longer in the system.
This "sticky factor" is a huge part of what makes Methadone so addictive. It is really, really hard to get off Methadone once you are hooked on it. The problem is that the drug is so sticky that it tends to cling to your opiate receptors in your brain for much longer than other opiate painkillers would. This creates a very uncomfortable and very long detox process.
Keep in mind that treating chronic pain with an opiate is a bit like trying to use alcohol as an anesthetic for surgery. Think about this analogy for a moment and you will understand exactly how opiate drugs actually treat the pain in our bodies. What is really happening is that they are not treating the source of pain at all in our physical body, but instead the chemical is literally doping the brain so much that eventually the mind refuses to care about the intense pain signals that are repeatedly being sent to the brain. Getting to this point when a person is in intense pain means that you have to seriously medicate them to the point of being practically oblivious. Imagine using enough alcohol with a patient to properly prepare them for surgery and you have an idea of just how "out of it" a person can be on Methadone.
People think that Heroin is the worse opiate drug in the world and they think it is the most addictive. In some ways this might actually be the case. But if you look at the severity of cold turkey withdrawal, Methadone is actually worse than Heroin. When coming off of Heroin, anyone can go to a treatment center or drug rehab, stop using the drug immediately, and have medications administered that can control most of the detox symptoms. With Methadone, if people are taking a high enough amount of the drug, then this is really not even possible. The only way to avoid an intense and miserable withdrawal is to slowly ween the addict down in their dosage over time so that they are only taking a minimal amount of Methadone. This is not easy for some addicts to do in itself, especially if they have chronic pain issues that they are dealing with also. In fact, it can be very difficult to get off Methadone, even with this slow weening down process in a person with no chronic pain.
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