Methadone addiction can affect plenty of women that struggle everyday with other forms of opiate addiction, and think they’ve found a solution by taking the opiate replacement drug Methadone. What many do not realize, and often aren’t told, is that this “replacement” or “substitution” approach to treating addiction just perpetuates their dependence to opiates.
Methadone and Suboxone are popular medications prescribed to treat addiction to drugs such as OxyContin, Heroin and Vicodin. They are meant to prevent or delay withdrawal and opiate cravings and are deemed by many to have less abuse and addiction potential.
But plenty of people stay on these medications for years, extending the physical dependencies they wanted to kick. Abuse is also possible with Methadone and people may become full-blown addicted. Other options for opiate treatment, which may offer more immediate solutions, include detox, rehab and rapid opiate detoxification.
Why Are Women More Vulnerable To Painkiller Addiction?
Experts say that women may be more prone to becoming dependent upon prescription painkillers. This is due in part to complex biological processes and because women are more likely to receive prescriptions for these drugs in the first place. They are thought to suffer more chronic pain because of injury, surgery or illness. Migraines and menstrual cramps are sometimes treated with opiates.
By nature, women are more emotional creatures and this can make them more sensitive to opiate dependence. Their issues may be rooted in emotional pain and suffering for any number of reasons, such as past trauma and abuse. This can make them much more vulnerable to the pleasurable and numbing effects of opiates.
Additional Risks For Pregnant Women
Prescription painkiller addiction is more dangerous for women because of pregnancy. There has been an explosion in recent years of babies born addicted to opiates. The fallout from this may not be fully known at this time because experts aren’t sure of the long-term effects of opiate exposure in utero. These drugs can affect birth weight and cause defects and other long-term problems.
The use of opiates during pregnancy jeopardizes the health of the mother and unborn child. But stopping cold turkey can be even more dangerous because of opiate withdrawal symptoms. The current treatment for pregnant women dependent on opiates is Methadone. This means that women who use opiates and become pregnant should speak to a doctor about options for managing this problem during pregnancy.
Methadone Detox and Addiction
While Methadone can allow some patients to stop their painkiller or even heroin use, it is merely a replacement and/or maintenance drug and the patient is really not drug free. Methadone patients remain dependent on opioids and continue to have strong cravings. In most cases Methadone is a much harder drug to detoxify from then most other opiates.
Waismann Method offers a highly successful accelerated detox program to help Methadone users completely detoxify, while under medical care in a private room of an accredited hospital.
Waismann detox center has developed innovative anesthesia assisted methadone detox protocols that allows even high-dosage methadone patients to be completely detoxified off all opioids usually in 7 to 10 days. We have helped methadone dependent patients taking in excess of 300mgs hundreds of methadone daily, experiencing minimum of discomfort.
