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By David Morisson
Heroin itself having
been banished from the official U.S. Pharmacopoeia more than six
decades back, the award for the prescription drug most profoundly
misunderstood by all Americans, most reviled among drug users
and anti-drug warriors, alike, and regulated with most brutal
bureaucratic fervor undeniably must go to methadone.
Having shot dope off
and on for a quarter century, I know all the junkie myths by heart.
You know them, too: Meth is an evil exercise in government mind
control. Meth gets in your bones. Meth saps your sex. Once started
on meth, you're hooked for life.
For myself, I don't regret having rejected a psych-ward shrink's
urgings six years ago that as a hopeless heroin addict, meth maintenance
was the only path for me. The abstinence made possible by linking
arms with a unique 12-step circle of atheistic, artistic addict
freaks in Narcotics Anonymous has worked wonders for me.
Given the nature of
all-too many clinics, I'm grateful that the price I pay for not
having to slam dope compulsively isn't being treated like an immoral
scumbag by some smug, ignorant a**hole dispensing juice from behind
a Plexiglas window. And I certainly hope that the rising calls
to loosen the regulatory noose one day result in methadone maintenance
becoming less a daily drill in degradation and more a professional
course of treatment for a chronic disorder.
Meanwhile, I remain troubled by the intolerance and contempt too
many of my fellow 12-stepping addicts bear toward their dope fiend
brothers and sisters who are using methadone to cash out of the
sucker's game of junk addiction. A little humility is always in
order.
Just because abstinence works for me, doesn't mean it's going
to work for you. Just because I don't want methadone for myself,
doesn't mean that it's not the right route for you.
But too many...»»
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