I was addicted to heroin for 7 yrs and to get off they put me on methadone

There is no good reason to say that methadone is "ten times worse" than heroin.

You were probably using 'street' heroin, which means that you weren't using pure heroin.  Pure heroin (diacetylmorphine) is actually not that bad for you.  It's pretty hard to find any solid evidence that pure heroin causes any kind of organ damage.  "Street" heroin is a different matter because you don't have a clue what it may be adulterated with.

As for methadone, there isn't any evidence to support the absurd claim that it is "ten times worse" than heroin.  Methadone is easily metabolized and isn't known to cause any organ damage.  The idea that methadone is "pure poison" or "ten times worse" than another given opioid is just a myth; a popular myth, but it's just a myth.  I suggest that you try looking through medical literature for evidence that methadone is harmful instead of listening to other drug users (or whoever you're listening to) because whoever is claiming that methadone is worse is making ridiculous leaps in logic.

I read a fascinating book about 'street' heroin addicts that came to the remarkable conclusion that a fairly significant proportion of 'street heroin' addicts were not actually physiologically dependent on heroin, because the heroin they were using was of such low purity (Primm and Bath, 1973).  You might think you can tell how pure your heroin is, but you can't.  You're not a walking gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.

I'd be *HAPPY* to back up everything I've said with references.  Oh, what the heck, I'll supply some.  I'd be happy to listen if you can provide any actual evidence that methadone causes damage to the body.  I certainly can't find any evidence of it (the same is true of most opioids, including heroin).

 

As to why methadone is a good substitute, it's mainly due to it's long half life.  With methadone, you only need to dose once a day, instead of multiple times per day.  This decreases the amount of time and energy you spend obtaining the drug compared to short acting opioids.  I never understood why people called methadone "liquid handcuffs."  I certainly found it took a lot more energy to get codeine daily and dose multiple times per day than it did to get methadone once a day and to dose once a day.

The long half life also means that you reach a steady state in terms of the amount of methadone in your system, thus avoiding the instability in mood that is common with physiological dependence to short-acting opioids.

 

Primm BJ and Bath PE. 1973. Pseudoheroinism. International Journal of the Addictions. 8: 231 - 242.

Sanger DJ and Blackman DE (eds). Aspects of Psychopharmacology. Methuen & Co, New York, 1984. pp. 123 - 135.

If you are going to reference "medical" texts, maybe you should use some from THIS decade!?!? Just a thought. Do you have any idea how much we have learned about drugs/meds & their effects on the human mind & body in even the past ten years? Let alone since the 1970's-1980's? REAL people are asking for REAL help. If you do honestly want to help people, pass on CURRENT information from legitimate medical print.

I do agree w/ you although I've never taken Heroin! But w/ Methadone the 1 point you didn't mention is, "The level of Methadone the person is taking and for how long!" I started out on Duragesic Pain patches but got up to a very high dose, it didn't work well anymore so my MD switched me over to Methadone; started out @ 6 -10 mg p/day and within 2 yrs I was up to 15-10 mg p/ day! I lost my MD, and the MD that took over was blown away by the amount of M I was taking!! 1st thing he said is; "I'm not that kind of DR so what he wanted to do I agreed with but not at 1st. I agreed with him and told him I'd like to try an get 100% off of it. He was so impressed w/ that he changed his whole tune! So he gave me a 15 month program where he would get me 100% clean, decreasing 1/2 a pill every 2 weeks or 10 mg a month. Beginning I was on 150 mg a day (8+7 pills p/day which was way to much!) I'm now down to 5 pills a day or 50 mg a day, down 100 mg a day and the main reason I'm telling you this is simply because this method WORKS!! M is so addicting and the w/drawal side effects are so horrible I couldn't even begin to describe it. So quite possibly ALL the folks out there that are on a high dose of it needs to talk to their MD's to work this program! It's probably the only one that works if you honestly want or need to be drug free! Already my life is so much more manageable, more motivated, much less sleep etc etc so I'm going the whole distance! I'm looking at it this way: "I feel my broken back has had plenty of yrs to heal more than enough so I just simply don't need it anymore BUT physical therapy is probably a must as my back has been hurting the busier I am, the less it hurts! Sitting around and bein a VEG is when it hurts the worst! At any rate I hope this helps! Peace to All!