Methadone should be lumped with the “opioid crisis,” right?

If asked about methadone before working in hospice, one image would have immediately surfaced for me: people lined up at a clinic, anxiously awaiting their dose.

The image included a rundown neighborhood, a mix of scraggly men and weary women angling around a building. There would also be protestors with handmade signs (“Keep drugs away from our children!”). And maybe—if depicted by a Hollywood film—a black and white police cruiser would patrol the street. Those crowding the clinic are lowlifes, bums, and losers, addicted to a terrifying opiate like heroin, but now feeding their vile habits with a “safe,” prescribed substitute.

Grim, eh?

What comes to your mind when you consider methadone?

Maybe nothing.

But if you do have a thought, it probably is based on a movie. It’s a story on the mean streets of New York with old Al Pacino or young Ryan Gosling as a loner cop. If your thoughts weren’t from a film, then it was a 60 Minutes piece, a Law & Order rerun, or a hazy recollection when you were lost in the rundown side of chilly Milwaukee or sunburned Miami searching for a college roommate’s address. Regardless of the source of your fragmented memory, you “know” about methadone: it’s for drug addicts. Sure, people may need a physician’s prescription to get a dose, but it’s not much different than the various illegal or over-prescribed drugs that are currently wrecking far too many lives. Methadone should be lumped with the “opioid crisis,” right? Read More →

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