Some Tips for Methadone Rehab
If you are hooked on methadone and you are interested in getting off of the stuff then you might want to go to methadone rehab. You can pretty much go to any drug rehab or drug treatment center for this, but there is something that you need to keep in mind before you go.
The main thing to watch out for is that you need to taper yourself down quite a bit before you go to rehab. If you are taking a high or even a modest dose of methadone every day, then you really cannot just keep on taking that and walk into rehab and expect them to detox you. It is just not going to happen that fast because of the half life of the drug and how long it takes for it to leave your body.
A big part of the problem has to do with how they treat opiate withdrawal in a treatment center. They usually give you a synthetic partial opiate that is not as powerful as methadone and cannot compete with the actual methadone molecules at the receptor sites in your brain. In other words, if you still have methadone in your body, and you start to feel withdrawal symptoms and the treatment center gives you medicine to treat the withdrawal, it is not going to work because the synthetic opiate that they give you is not strong enough to overpower the methadone. The methadone is too sticky and leaves your body too slowly and it is too powerful. So the only solution really is that you need to do most of the detoxing at home by yourself. This is known as a taper and you need to get your dose down as low as possible before you go into rehab. The lower your dose is when you finally walk into treatment, the easier they will be able to treat you and the more comfortable they can make you feel during your detox.
So if you are planning on going to rehab, make sure that you taper yourself down as low as possible before you go in.
The rest of rehab for methadone is much the same as other drug addictions. You are addicted to opiates and you have become dependent on self medicating with them and you need a program and a design for living that does not include drugs and alcohol. This is going to be the same for every drug and it is no different with methadone.
Some opiate addicts who have not had any success with traditional treatment models may consider stepping down to Suboxone maintenance therapy. In doing so they are trading one addiction for another, but the Suboxone is much less powerful than methadone is. In fact is only a partial opiate and so it does not really flood the brain and get the body “high” like full opiates do. So this might be a decent option for some people who are struggling to be free of Methadone.
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