Question About Methadone For Pain Management (Top voted first)

Dear RxChat Community,

I just have one specific question, so this will be short. Why are Pain Management physicians so quick to prescribe Methadone, over any other narcotic, if they already know beforehand just how incredibly hard it will be to get off it--if ever? Do they have a hidden agenda? I will greatly appreciate any and all responses! Thank you all so much!!

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Hello Glenn, my experience as a lay person for 27+ years in pain management around people who have taken methadone causes them to not be able to feel the effects of other opiates and abuse other opiates. To me this would be the main reason doctors would be so quickly to prescribe methadone, plus it is a very good long acting narcotic analgesic for pain and it's relatively inexpensive compared to other narcotic analgesics these days after the Obamacare tax put on big pharma to help subsidize Obamacare, yeah we're all paying for it through higher prescription drug prices.

Yes the withdrawals are brutal from people I've seen coming off of long term use and it also makes other narcotic analgesics not work properly for a long period of time after discontinuing use. The period of time after discontinuing use varies from person to person for your opiate receptors in your brain to function like they did before the long term Methadone usage. Methadone clinic patients I know where I live carry a card saying their on Methadone and will require a much larger dose of narcotic analgesics to be effective controlling pain. I guess this is for someone in an accident so the emergency room will know it will require a larger dose to achieve the desired analgesic effect.

If you don't have alot of money or insurance Methadone is worth a serious look for managing long term chronic pain, but if money isn't an issue I would personally stay away from it after what I've seen others go through with long term usage. Like all drugs some people have bad reactions using it. I know several people who ulcerated their stomachs from long term use of it, but that was the liquid form and not the pills. Remember all opiate usage will have withdrawals and the extent of the withdrawals will be by how big the dosages were and how long you used them. Once again Methadone withdrawals are the worst and longest that I've personally witnessed people going through and after 27+ years in pain management I've seen people withdrawal from every opiate they make, but with that said everyone is a little different on how brutal the withdrawals are and how long they last. Bottom line is taking a small dose of Methadone every 12 hours is better than suffering.

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I believe the government is a bit more lenient on methadone docs, because it is not a drug of abuse. Just a guess, but where I live, pharmacies can be worse than docs.

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Methadone is very cheap, so it is affordable for many whereas other pain medications aren't.

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They think it’s safer in that you won’t shoot it up or something. It seems cruel with withdrawals will be hell compared to coming off actual pain pills.

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