Heroin Addiction

Question: How do i go about finding a doctor who prescribes methadone for heroin addiction?

(Posted by: on 2009-07-14 10:28:21)

I have a son who is in a methadone program. He cannot travel and spend time away from home because he has to go to the clinic every day to pick up his methadone. How do I go about finding a physician in my area who will prescribe methadone for him so that he can travel or even come home to live ( the nearest clinic to my home is an hours drive away )

Posted by: David on 2009-07-14, 10:39:09

Um go on the streets there are alot of doctors ;) LOL

Posted by: J G on 2009-07-14, 10:48:46

Maybe ask his clinic, or even the clinic that is nearest you if they could make any suggestions, or if there is anywhere they could call in to for him to be able to get it. I'm sure as long as he he is going to the clinic fairly often to make sure he is treating the addiction, not just replacing it, the will work around someway for him to be able to travel short term, or move.

Posted by: Sarah G on 2009-07-14, 11:00:27

If you live in the US, this is strictly illegal. You will not find a doctor who will do this in this country. A doctor can prescribe methadone for pain management, or prescribe opiates for a short-term medical detox, but this doesn't really help you. If your son is compliant with his methadone program, he'll start getting take-home doses as quickly as a few months. This will allow him to travel: he just needs to avoid skipping days and pass his drug screens. The exact rules vary by state, but the number of days you can take home build up and generally after a year or two of good behavior you only have to go once a month. There is, in most places, something called "hardship " dosing. You can sometimes set up a program where you go once a week to the clinic and get a take-home supply. Then you have to coordinate with a nearby program that does monitoring and provides the necessary addiction treatment. If your son just wants to take a trip and he's been in the program for a while, there's also something called "exception " dosing. This will let the clinic give him a one-time set of doses to take with him during the trip. The rules on this vary by state, but it's usually for patients who have been there long enough for take-home doses but haven't been compliant enough to get them. There is another drug called buprenorphine that a doctor can prescribe for opiate dependency on an outpatient basis. If your son wants to come live with you, he could find a doctor in your town and set up a treatment. This is usually pretty expensive compared to methadone, and switching from methadone requires you to go about three days into detox from methadone or it will make you very sick. Some buprenorphine doctors refuse to take methadone patients for this reason. Also, it's really important that you treat the addiction in addition to the chemical dependency on opiates. An outpatient buprenorphine program typically doesn't include any addiction treatment, just a chemical dependency treatment. This puts a higher burden on your son to get treatment himself. If you want to try buprenorphine, check out buprenorphine.samhsa.gov/ bwns_locator/ and talk to some of the local doctors. You could also call your local clinic about hardship dosing. Good luck to your son. Methadone treatment can help you switch off the dangerous and highly disruptive short-acting opiates, but dealing with the addiction and mental health issues that led him there takes a lot of work. For this reason, people generally stay on methadone for years before they are ready to stop. The chemical dependency is the easy part of this situation.

Posted by: Ms Kitty on 2009-07-14, 12:09:05

David is a douche bag. David is a douche bag..... lol