Narconon News

In the Second World War, the Allies blocked the import of morphine to Germany which left the wounded Nazi troops without appropriate pain medications. The German scientist developed a synthetic opiate, Polamidon, which was later named methadone, that had the analgesic properties similar to morphine, but with the added advantage of lasting four to five times longer between doses.

After the war, the factory where methadone was invented fell under American control, which led to the first clinical trials of Methadone in 1947. The American pharmaceutical company, Eli-Lilly, first coined the name Dolophine – which comes from a combination of the Latin word dolor (pain) and the French word fin (end).

Eli Lilly was unsuccessful in marketing Dolophine (methadone) as a low cost analgesic and by the early 1950s, the drug was hardly being used at all. In 1968, New York City doctors, at Rockefeller University, Marie Nyswander and Vincent Dole, were experimenting with different drugs to help heroin users and discovered methadone could be used as a substitute for any other opiate, including heroin.

During the Nixon presidency, Vietnam veterans were returning home to America with heroin addictions that were costing them $5-a-day in Southeast Asia, but required $100 or more to maintain in the US. In a speech in 1971, Nixon called drug addiction “public enemy number one” and supported an expansion of methadone as a detox medication and as a replacement maintenance for those opiate addicts that had relapse histories.

From that time to present, methadone maintenance clinics have become very profitable business enterprises, since the cost of methadone is about ten cents/dose and those that are on daily doses of methadone cannot easily stop taking this drug, since methadone is known to produce the highest level of symptoms of opiate withdrawal.

Profits from the methadone dispensing business are also assured by the government, both state and federal, limiting competition by only allowing a certain number of clinics within a given area and since their patients must have the drug daily, the clinics can basically charge whatever the public can afford and be assured of repeat business.

Alcohol and drug addiction counselors whose purpose is to rehabilitate addicts so that they can reclaim the beauty of living drug-free have always opposed the use of substituting one drug for another, and for good clinical reasons.

The purpose of drug rehab is to restore a normalcy in the lives of people that have been avoiding life’s pain and, consequently the pleasure, as well, by taking opiates or painkillers. The substituting of one drug for another is counter to this noble effort and makes the goal of a drug-free life a futile endeavor. Therefore, the obvious moral prerogative is to free the individual from the compulsive need to take methadone daily or suffer consequences that are quite severe.

To convince the public that methadone maintenance is the only effective treatment for most opiate addicts, the methadone industry documents their business by quoting numerous articles claiming that the brain makes certain irreversible changes during opiate addiction that force the “recovering” addict to continue to supply their bodies with daily doses of opiate medications.

For those who believe this research and don’t investigate further, this argument may seem logical, however, it doesn’t present the obvious argument that even though there are approximately half million people on methadone maintenance, there are literally millions of ex-heroin addicts that are living successful, normal lives without the need to “repair their brain chemistry”. Anecdotal interviews with methadone patients has revealed that it is very hard to find anyone on methadone maintenance that likes their treatment and doesn’t feel enslaved by their need for these daily doses.