Running head: METHADONE AND DEPENDENCY

The Effects of Methadone Treatment on Opiate and Heroin Dependency

Since the early times, opiates, heroin, and other drugs have been used in providing analgesia as well as substitutes to reach a place of euphoria. Originally, as Yurgelum-Todd et al (2009) has noted, derived from the opium poppy, heroin has been used as an alternative to morphine in dealing with addiction (Yurgelum-Todd, p. 175, 2009). Unfortunately, over the years it has consistently become prevalent that heroin has more negative aspects than anything; heroin is highly addictive, resulting in consequences such as overdoses, infections, violence and crime, deficits in memory, learning, and attention. The need to relieve pain by use of heroin and other drugs, though, results in opioid dependence, estimated to affect more than one million persons in North America alone (Oviedo-Joekes, p. 778, 2009). To relieve opiate dependence, researchers experimented with an opiate-agonist called methadone; the standard opioid-susbstitution treatment, to help reduce withdrawals and other negative consequences surrounding the use of drugs like heroin by producing a phenomenon called the “blocking-dose”, which blocks opiate receptors (Oviedo-Joekes, p. 778, 2009). Methadone was, in fact, the “first opiate agonist used in the pharmacotherapy of heroin addiction. Methadone is the best studied drug, but also the most controversial”(Maremmani, p. 7, 2008). This paper will discuss different research methods used to analyze the effects of methadone among patients who are willing to undergo the treatment. Specifically, the research focuses on the early impacts of methadone induction, the acceptability, safety and tolerance of methadone, and possible improvements in cognitive performance after treatment. The first study analyzed was one done by Mark