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How Addictive is Heroin, Really?
by Jack Trimpey,
Founder, Rational Recovery

mericans have been enticed to believe that heroin is the Big, Bad Grandaddy of all drugs, the most powerful, the most addictive substance on Earth, the Big One that reduces casual users to lifelong slaves in a short time.
In the 1950's, Frank Sinatra portrayed a heroin addict inThe Man With The Golden Arm (TMWTGA), and viewers can recall the leading character writhing in unbearable pain during his excruciating "cold-turkey" withdrawal. I hear often

METHADONE
A Change of Heart

was not fond of methadone myself perhaps believing that methadone "still a drug" etc, etc, etc.
from people who tell me about their harrowing withdrawals, with muscle and abdominal cramps, sweats, nausea,motor restlessness, diarrhea, and so on, and then the prolonged epidodes of "jonesing" or craving the next fix, and finally to complete the cycle, a return to fixing.
continue... Indeed methadone
I stigmatized the medicine and it's patients like most people who do not know it's story and it's capacity. What I was ignorant about was that I could not make the distinction between a badly run methadone clinic and the medication itself. I went back into methadone again after my last relapse and having had some background in psychology and rehabilitation I began to notice that it was not the medication itself, but the way that it is administered.
Through my desperation and research, I found the National Alliance of Methadone Advocates, became a member and although I have detoxed from methadone, I have not abandoned the pursuit of quality methadone treatment. continue... In spite of

 

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November 2001   turn