Methadone: Methadone Detox Facts

Question: What is methadone and it's effects?

(Posted by: on 2012-01-06 14:25:42)

They just put my mom on methadone along with her lortabs and I'm just wandering if this is something that's gonna make her seem like she's taking a lot of her medicine or wht.. They said they put her on it to make her pain meds last her longer, Any info you have on this would help...

Posted by: mandie :] on 2012-01-06, 14:29:47

Its a pain medication, and a narcotic their addictive and most people take more then then need to for a quick high.

Posted by: Dr. Rockzo The Rock and Roll Clown on 2012-01-06, 14:46:03

That's sounds weird cause methadone is used buy opiate addicts to kick the habit, its a different kind of pain killer than an opiate based one, but people use them to get high too.

Posted by: kartua on 2012-01-06, 15:09:58

Methadone is used to get people off of Heroin and Morphine. I'd get a second opinion!

Posted by: J Miller on 2012-01-06, 21:24:40

It would be nice if people knew what they were talking about before they answered a question. Methadone is a medication used to treat pain and to treat addiction to drugs like heroin and certain pail killers. The way it's used for pain and for addiction is a bit different though. It's a synthetic opiate, meaning it has about the same effect as opiates, such as morphine or lortab, but it's not made from the opium poppy as "real " opiates are. It's a pretty strong pain killer so it's very effective for moderate to severe pain and the effects lasts longer than the effects of natural opiates. Many people with pain take methadone as a maintenance medication to keep their pain under control and then take a short acting pain medication, like Lortab, for acute pain when they need something more. Another benefit with methadone is that it doesn't cause you to develop a tolerance nearly as fast as you do to natural opiates. When you take drugs like Lortab or morphine you need to keep taking larger doses to get the same effect as the body gets used to the drug. With methadone you can take the same dose for long periods of time and get the same effect. Opiates, synthetic and natural, are very safe to the body and causes no harm to internal organs even if used for many years. There is risk of overdose though so it's very important to take them exactly as prescribed. Your mom should never take more than prescribed or take it more often than prescribed. Because methadone lasts longer the levels of the drug in the blood stream will build up as you keep taking the drug so if you take more than you're supposed to you can easily overdose which can be fatal. Another drawback with opiates is that when taken daily for more than a few weeks the body gets used to getting it and becomes physically dependent. That means that when the person who is dependent stops taking the medication abruptly she will go into withdrawal which makes one very sick for several days. With methadone, because it lasts longer, the withdrawal symptoms also lasts longer. But this can be avoided by reducing the dose little by little down to zero. Drugs like methadone and Lortab should never be stopped abruptly. If your mom uses her medication as presccribed she should be like normal. It should not make her high or intoxicated. A side effect of opiates is tiredness so she may get more tired than usual but that could go away over time and there are ways to avoid it. If your mom seems out of it she could be taking a too high dose. However, people with very severe pain may sometimes have to take very high doses to get relief so if she seems very tired or a bit out of it once in a while it doesn't necessarily mean that she is taking too much. She may need it at that time. If it happens all the time though she should probably reduce her dose. Most people that take methadone function like everyone else so for the most part there is no need to worry.