Will methadone use continue for those receiving heroin addiction support?

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by Change | 6 Aug 2010

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The debate ranges on about the advantages and disadvantages of using methadone to treat heroin addiction.

Despite being a useful drug addiction treatment for heroin users, methadone itself can prove highly addictive - and its use has sparked debate from experts and recovering drug addicts up and down the country.

Professor Neil McKeganey, the director of the University of Glasgow's centre for drug misuse research, said earlier this year that abstinence should be preferable to the use of methadone, BBC Radio 4's Linda Pressly reports.

But his recommendations were countered by a group of 40 experts, which included drug addiction doctors and university professors. They asserted that if methadone treatment was stopped, Britain can expect "more overdose deaths, more HIV and more crime".

In her report, Ms Pressly spoke to recovering addict Chris, who started using methadone in 2005 in attempt to stop using heroin.

"I just thought, I've got to get a grip here, because I've been in and out of prison since I was 16 - that's half my life," he told the reporter.

Chris currently resides in HMP Edinburgh's Ratho Hall, a drug addiction help centre that allows prisoners to become abstinent.

In addition to being a heroin substitute, methadone can help relieve symptoms of anxiety.

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