{"id":4436,"date":"2009-08-18T14:56:58","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T13:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=4436"},"modified":"2009-08-21T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T13:58:14","slug":"palliation-%e2%80%a6hmm-when-i-was-the-director-of-a-drug-agency-the-treament-of-choice-for-opiate-dependend-users-was-methadone-withdrawal-now-it-appears-to-be-methadone-maintenance-the-users-i-ha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2009\/08\/palliation-%e2%80%a6hmm-when-i-was-the-director-of-a-drug-agency-the-treament-of-choice-for-opiate-dependend-users-was-methadone-withdrawal-now-it-appears-to-be-methadone-maintenance-the-users-i-ha\/","title":{"rendered":"Methadone"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">Palliation \u2026hmm. When I was the director of a drug agency the treatment of choice for opiate dependent users was methadone withdrawal. Now it appears to be methadone maintenance. The users I have worked with all wanted to get off drugs \u2013 they did not want to be maintained on a drug prescribed and dished out to them as \u2018treatment\u2019. By all means use methadone withdrawal for a short period of, say, 6-12 weeks \u2013 and at the same time help the user in a very intensive way through counselling, introduction to 12-step programmes, encouragement to join a self-help group, the opportunity (and possibly funding) to join a gym or a sports club, help with housing and employment or voluntary work and so on. This might need the setting up of special volunteer centres where those who would not pass a CRB check could still help in some way under supervision. I sometimes think that those who simply dish out methadone maintenance are little better than a dealer; most users do not want to be prescribed a legal drug as treatment \u2013 they want to be drug free.<br \/>\nAnd I cannot pass up an opportunity to plead for more funds for effective prevention \u2013 and please don\u2019t tell me prevention doesn\u2019t work ! Good prevention does work \u2013 I have seen it in Sweden and in parts of the USA and in small projects in the UK. What doesn\u2019t work is a 20 minute lesson using drug education packs which promote the \u2018informed choices\u2019 agenda. Give a youngster a choice and some will choose to use \u2013 is this what you want ? Good prevention means no more mixed messages from the media, from drug education packs and from the government. The latest figures show that so-called harm reduction has been an abysmal failure \u2013 surely the tipping point has been reached and we must now help to prevent more people suffering the pain of addiction by getting back to a drugs strategy which has the prevention of use as its central objective and genuine harm reduction leading to abstinence as a secondary objective.<br \/>\nBy AnnieS on 09\/07\/2009 at 6:51 PM &#8211; Report this comment <\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Palliation \u2026hmm. When I was the director of a drug agency the treatment of choice for opiate dependent users was methadone withdrawal. Now it appears to be methadone maintenance. The users I have worked with all wanted to get off drugs \u2013 they did not want to be maintained on a drug prescribed and dished [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}