Why methadone doesn't work (opinionated) The Gaurdian

[usandthem]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/10/why-methadone-drugs-dont-work

[simon]

A gallon to 33 people is that about 140ml each? I'm heartened to see such doses.

[usandthem]

Lol! Thats a very ambitious dose Simon

[simon]

Lol! Thats a very ambitious dose Simon

Gallon sounds much more likely to outrage the readers doesn't it?
I'd imagine he orders 500 ml bottles like most other pharmacists or perhaps he refuses to accept anything other than imperial measurements. 
'Good morning oh pious pharmacist can I have a gill or two of your finest synthetic opioids please, yes the green stuff with the old-fashioned green colouring. Make it snappy and I'll give you half a crown'.

[sapphire]

OK, logged on as Sapphire99,some other bugger already had Sapphire! Damn Cheek. Looks like the 'journo' went to 1 chmist and spoke to one anti meth addict about meth, and came up with his conclusions that way.

Oh, he also thinks you have to go to the chemist everyday, and it rots your teeth.

I have put him right!

[derek d j]

Usual confused 'liberal' Guardian nonsense. 'George' has been 'off drugs for ten years' - no, he isn't, he's a methadone addict. Funny the paper can't find room for letters from The Alliance but gives space to the peregrinations of a Yorkshire pharmacist - Grauniad readers are respectable, ok?

The inside pages of a midweek 'Society' section - this thread probably has as many readers. Sapphire can set them straight. Drug wars bring misery and drug warriors swiftly descend into lunacy. Methadone was introduced to divert attention away from the central issue and to keep drug users non-euphoric and under control. Now there are over 300,000 unnecessary criminals, liberal folk finally scratch their heads and wonder if the abandonment of Rolleston wasn't the single most disastrous social policy decision in modern history.

Control - of what you are, of what you think - is what it's all about. If you lack mind forged manacles, Drug Laws will clamp you into iron ones. Only the USA and its puppets still pretend the 'drug war' is about anything else. Burning the fields, imprisoning drug users and feeding citizens fear and lies takes a special kind of ugliness. Enough! Get out of my paper and my land.

[angiesims AKA true grit :)]

Oh god seeing that picture with that little plastic cup with that green medicine. I can taste it! I certainly never thought it was green gunk  and why does it appear its such a bad thing they have been coming back years! Isn't that the point. We are maintaining our lives! Shakes her head in disbelief like the drug therapist JANE 

[usandthem]

I knew this would get a response. The blog itself is quiet amusing. The pro-life abstinence posters are very fierce in their view. One of them proports to work in the dsp and knows everything there is about 100% of all addicts lol

[physeptomaton]

Usual confused 'liberal' Guardian nonsense. 'George' has been 'off drugs for ten years' - no, he isn't, he's a methadone addict. Funny the paper can't find room for letters from The Alliance but gives space to the peregrinations of a Yorkshire pharmacist - Grauniad readers are respectable, ok?

The inside pages of a midweek 'Society' section - this thread probably has as many readers. Sapphire can set them straight. Drug wars bring misery and drug warriors swiftly descend into lunacy. Methadone was introduced to divert attention away from the central issue and to keep drug users non-euphoric and under control. Now there are over 300,000 unnecessary criminals, liberal folk finally scratch their heads and wonder if the abandonment of Rolleston wasn't the single most disastrous social policy decision in modern history.

Control - of what you are, of what you think - is what it's all about. If you lack mind forged manacles, Drug Laws will clamp you into iron ones. Only the USA and its puppets still pretend the 'drug war' is about anything else. Burning the fields, imprisoning drug users and feeding citizens fear and lies takes a special kind of ugliness. Enough! Get out of my paper and my land.

And what of those heroin addicts not in treatment? They visit me regularly for clean needles to inject filthy brown street heroin. There is growing evidence to support treating these long-term relapsing addicts with pure heroin. A blueprint for the requisite regulatory changes has been created, but until the laws are changed they must remain thieves and prostitutes, rather than patients, victims of legalised social neglect.

So he supports the type of prescribing you get, from the sound of that, and Drug Laws reform. Hardly an abstentionist.
And to simon, he mentions the weekend- it was probably a Saturday before a closed-chemist Sunday so that gallon will lead to around 65ml average daily dose. Or a Friday even worse (average more like 40-45ml)

[derek d j]

Yes, I thought the pharmacist had a nice head.  I'm not so sure about the posters to the 'comments' section, which was what took my attention. I love the way readers bring in their pet bunnies - sexual exploitation, child abuse, poverty, all the Guardian darlings - to explain the addiction phenomenon. Also a keyworker type in favour of 'changed behaviour' but Sapphire ate her.

But it's reassuring to see a majority in favour of a more widespread prescription of diamorphine. Now a pretty standard liberal sentiment. Just the right wingers and middle-of-the-roads to go, then.

[usandthem]

The pharmacists last few paragraphs are more to my tune when he mentions swapping for Diamorphine Treatment. But it is the slating of a treatment he only serves and has no oral experience of. So who is he to say methadone doesn't work?! It works fine for me. Anyway, like I said its opinionated.

[froude]

The Guardian,Great, another paper to stay clear from ,likes to have locum pharmacists writing shite about Methadone again.Where do they get all these people that think Meth is shit,METHADONE IS CRAP FORUM or REHABS ARE BEST BUT YOU GOTTA GET A MORGAGE TO GO IN ONE.Had to get the METHADONE HATCH IN,now people who didnt think about it will think thats the hatch for the junkies,Grrrrrrreat as Tony would say.All the best Froude.

[sapphire]

This article really got my goat, the bloke only interviewed 1 ex addict with a bias against meth, and 1 locum pharmacist, ans as we all know, locum are not best judged to know the in's ad out's of the pharmacies clientele.


Grrrrrrrrr, why did the bloke do no actual research, or produce actual evidence, I can't even believe the Guardian published this pile of shit.

[OP8S]

So why exactly does it not work & if it doesn't then suitable alternatives should be provided. A lone locum pharmacist's opinion as well as another purple. How is it that their views are considered of such importance, there's one hell of a lot of other users who have different opinions that don't claim to know 100% about others substance use but are self aware & know about their own substance use.

[physeptomaton]

Yes, I thought the pharmacist had a nice head.  I'm not so sure about the posters to the 'comments' section, which was what took my attention. I love the way readers bring in their pet bunnies - sexual exploitation, child abuse, poverty, all the Guardian darlings - to explain the addiction phenomenon. Also a keyworker type in favour of 'changed behaviour' but Sapphire ate her.

But it's reassuring to see a majority in favour of a more widespread prescription of diamorphine. Now a pretty standard liberal sentiment. Just the right wingers and middle-of-the-roads to go, then.

We have just had the first whole life tariff for an exclusive (i.e. not murdering) sex offender in the UK. Almost as satisfying as Diconal or even a palfium semi-speedball. And I didn't even know any of the victims. Wonder what Froude would have to say about that, having grown up unknowingly on an estate with one of the top five sickest families in the UK- only for the prime mover, as it were, to get 15 years and be out this year guaranteed.