Treatment Strategies in Counseling Methadone Clients Using Benzodiazepines and other Licit and Illicit Substances

Treatment Strategies in Counseling Methadone Clients Using Benzodiazepines and other Licit and Illicit Substances

Introduction

Methadone is a synthetic opioid, which is used to treat the opiate dependency and severe chronic pain. Opiate dependency is a very common public health problem. There are several goals and purposes to utilize methadone in different domains of health care. It is very common to use benzodiazepines and other illicit and licit drugs in combination with methadone. This combination will produce certain beneficial and horrible synergistic effects in the patient. Methadone management treatment is an approach to cure the dependency with the help of methadone. There are several treatment strategies that should be used to cure the effects, produced by the mixing of methadone and other drugs. This paper will provide an overview of methadone, the purpose of methadone usage, history of methadone in America, synergistic effects, and treatment strategies used in case of combined drugs used.



Methadone

Methadone is a synthetic analgesic drug, which is used to treat substance addiction especially heroin and morphine. Methadone is using in health care settings as an analgesic and anti-addictive drug. Methadone is also used to manage severe pain and powerful effects. The main function of this drug is to treat the condition of opioid dependence. Cross tolerance is a unique characteristic of methadone, which refers the tolerance to similar drugs. Methadone causes the similar effects as heroin or morphine offers but with longer duration. Methadone is used to stabilize the patients by making opioids more tolerable (Gray, Dams, Choo, Jones & Huestis, 2011).

It is also suggested that higher doses of methadone is responsible to block the euphoric effects of morphine, and other drugs (Drug Bank, 2013). Studies have shown that this drug is widely used as a safe treatment of opioid addiction. This drug is also responsible to suppress the withdrawal symptoms. Moreover, methadone does not cause sedation, intoxication, and euphoria.

Purpose of Methadone

Opiate or opioid dependence is a major health problem, which is associated with various deadly diseases. Opioid dependence is responsible to transmit HIV and hepatitis. Opiate dependence is also associated with a criminal history, hospital admission, overdose, and death. The main purpose of methadone use is to cure severe pain and opiate dependence. It is a synthetic and long-acting opioid, having pharmacological actions similar to morphine. It is µ-receptor agonist and may aggregate the effects of neurotransmitters. This accounts for its antitussive and analgesic properties, sedation, hormone regulation, hypotension, miotic pupils, respiratory depression, reduced bowel motility, and nausea. Long term administration of methadone is used to reduce the dependency on opiate. The aim of long term administration is to substitute methadone for the illicit drugs (Anderson & Kearney, 2000). These illicit drugs are associated with increased risk of mortality and morbidity. Long term administration is also helpful to reprieve from daily schedule. It also allows a person for self denial of abusive drug. Long term administration of this drug is also ...