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In spite of the fact that methadone is having good results with in the treatment community, we continue to ignore it.

The problem has been that most Methadone clinics themselves are ignoring appropriate medical and counseling protocol. Most people who are professionals in drug treatment, in recovery, and general medical practitioners are ignorant of methadone's potentials and its results.

Usually, you encounter that the word METHADONE is like a bad word. When professionals are in training, it is rarely discussed, but rather the attitude of professionals is that it is to be tolerated.
But if you were to have a reasonable and rational discussion with those teachers and professionals, you'd find that they either do not know much and they admit it, or you'd find a lot of erroneous information coming out in the conversation. It turns on their idiological switch.
One usually hears information that is based on their own personal beliefs and made to sound like their "professional opinion". Instead, there are a lot of myths and fallacies about methadone treatment and its patients.
After the review of almost 40 years of methadone research studies, the and numerous medical and social service organizations, including surprisingly enough Barry McCaffrey (the drug Czar) have come out of the closet, so to speak and have acknowledged methadone as having the best results of all of the traditional treatment modalities. 		As a professional and an advocate for methadone treatment, I have encountered tremendous barriers. My colleagues would rather make me wrong than listen to reasonable arguments for the use of methadone as a worthy modality of treatment.

To speak about methadone is difficult, because most people refuse to believe that a well-run program could have the results they truly have. Even poorly run programs, in spite of their incompetence, have what most people would consider good results.

-- Carlos Franco -- MHS,MS
The Methadone Enabler

 

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November 2001   turn