10 Ways Methadone Maintenance Therapy Will Change Your Life

Changing lives for those who are dependent on opioids is what methadone maintenance therapy is all about. Detoxification from short-acting opioids like heroin and prescription painkillers is generally not enough to promote long-term abstinence as these drugs have powerful, and in some ways, predictable, properties that change brain functions and neurobiological systems that are influential in high relapse potentials.

Methadone maintenance therapy has a long history of success in helping people to reduce and eliminate their illicit use of short-acting opioids while retaining them in a recovery program long enough to improve their health, social functioning, and other conditions that affect their quality of life. The following are 10 ways methadone maintenance therapy will change your life.

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1.) Reduction in Illicit Opioid Abuse

Abusing opioid drugs like heroin and prescription painkillers involves an endless cycle of searching, obtaining, using, and withdrawing from the drugs placing the abuser in harmful or dangerous situations, including using the drugs via rapid delivery methods such as injecting them.

In methadone maintenance therapy appropriate doses of methadone safely helps to eliminate the imposing cycles of intoxication and withdrawal by reducing cravings and the frequent need to consume the more destructive short-acting opioids to avoid withdrawals.

2.) Decreased Risk of Opioid Overdose

Continuous increases in opioid tolerance leads to elevated use of the drugs and abusers often resort to snorting, smoking, or injecting the drugs to satisfy their needs. Methadone maintenance therapy provides the daily dosing of methadone that block the euphoric effects of other opioids, deterring abuse and reducing consequential overdose risks.

Heroin potencies are significantly higher today than they were several years ago and many opioid dependents are switching or alternating their use of prescription opioids when one or the other is unavailable. According to the DEA “Because heroin abusers do not know the actual strength of the drug or its true contents, they are at a high risk of overdose or death. According to the CDC,” Of the 22,767 deaths relating to prescription drug overdose in 2013, 16,235 (71.3%) involved opioid painkillers.”

3.) Improved Physical Health

Poor eating, sleeping, and hygiene habits compounded with excessive disruptions of the central nervous system and normal bodily processes, lack of medical care, and potentially diseases or infections are common among opioid dependents. According to the SAMHSA,” Methadone causes no harm to tissues or organs and is medically safe when taken responsibly.”

Medical intervention is a primary element of methadone maintenance therapy that addresses special medical needs for pregnant woman and those suffering from co-existing medical problems including AIDs, Hepatitis, HIV, or the numerous other physical health problems. Education, referrals, and a wide range of resources are available in methadone maintenance therapy programs to help ensure your success by helping to improve your physical health.

4.) Improved Mental Health

Methadone therapy will help you get your life back on track.

The amount of stress an opiate dependent must go through on a daily basis to stay “well” is often quite phenomenal, destroying their overall mental health. They tend to suffer high rates of anxiety, depression, guilt, and preoccupations with opioid use and behaviors that add to their compulsive use and mental distress.

Methadone maintenance therapy will change your life by helping you improve your mental health combining methadone with counseling and psychotherapy interventions tailored to your needs. According to the SAMHSA “Similar to patients with other chronic disorders, many who are opioid addicted have been found to respond best to treatment that combines pharmacological and behavioral interventions.”

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5.) Regained Independence

Methadone maintenance therapy will change your life as you realize you can think more clearly and function with a higher degree of normalcy and focus to provide for your basic needs and regain independence from the devastating consequences of illicit opioid abuse. According to the SAMHSA,”As a result of not being sick from withdrawal, individuals are able to refocus on work, family, and other responsibilities.”

6.) Improved Social Functioning

According to the Institute of Medicine (US),”Drug abuse is often the result of a constellation of factors including socioeconomic status, educational achievement, co-occurring psychiatric disorders, access to health care, employment status, and numerous other factors present in the lives of drug-abusing individuals.”

Methadone maintenance therapy will change your life by combining the daily dispensing of methadone with treatment plans to address psychosocial issues such as vocational goals, education, child welfare, family, legal, financial, and other social services needed to improve your social functioning.

7.) Improved Motivations

The more goals you achieve in your methadone maintenance therapy, the more recovery motivations you will tend to gain in other areas of your life. Motivation, according to the SAMHSA, “is the probability that a person will enter into, continue, and adhere to a specific change strategy.” It changes over time and can be greatly influenced by the availability of resources and staff in methadone maintenance therapy.

8.) Relapse Prevention

Methadone maintenance therapy will change your life by helping you to recognize problematic areas that disrupt or inhibit your recovery progress. Combined with coping skills and strategies learned through counseling and behavioral interventions, or methadone keeps you from craving opioids. You will also be introduced to 12-Step recovery groups where you can find the long lasting support of others in recovery.

9.) Retention in Treatment

Methadone maintenance therapy is recommended for at least a year so that psychosocial, medical, and treatment goals can be obtained in the most effective manner. Some people progress more slowly or wish to stay in treatment indefinitely. Treatment retention increases the potentials to succeed in recovery and as long as there is a risk of relapse, methadone maintenance therapy is advocated.

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10.) Improved Relationships

Methadone maintenance therapy can change the dysfunction in your family and help you to improve communications and develop more trust with those you care about. Your association changes to positive drug free and supportive individuals will continue to encourage you as you go through life in recovery.