How You Can Help a Family Member get Methadone Maintenance Treatment

Opiate Addiction and Methadone Maintenance Treatment

Opiate addiction has significantly increased throughout the years, partially due to the increase of sales in prescription painkillers. Opiates are painkillers that can either be manmade or natural substances that come from the opium from the poppy plant. Opiates include drugs like, morphine, oxycontin, heroin, Percocet, Roxicodone and codeine.

Opiate addiction is a chronic disease that typically will require treatment in order for your family member to overcome it. There are various types of treatment programs available for you to choose from, but methadone maintenance treatment has been proven to be the most successful at helping people get through an opiate detox.

According to the National Institute on drug Abuse, when methadone is combined with behavioral therapies or counseling, and other supportive services, it enables patients to stop using heroin and other opiates, and return to more productive and stable lives. Furthermore, methadone has also been shown to reduce criminal repetition, addiction related death, and the spread of diseases.

If your family member has an addiction and a dependency to an opiate drug, meaning that they begin to experience withdrawal symptoms every time the drug is not in their system, they may need methadone maintenance treatment.

How to Get a Family Member into Methadone Maintenance Treatment

Methadone can help your loved one get their life back on track.

The best way to get your family member into methadone maintenance treatment is to present them with facts, and get them to see the negative consequences for their drug abuse. This may require the need of an intervention, but drug addiction always has consequences that negatively affect a user’s life. For example, they may begin to hurt people they care about, or they may lose their job. Moreover, many people addicted to drugs resort to criminal activities, such as stealing, to afford their drugs.

After you have shown your family member that they need help, you can then explain to them the benefits of methadone maintenance treatment, and perhaps provide them with their different options of treatment programs.

One benefit about methadone maintenance therapy that you may want to provide to your family member is the safety about methadone maintenance treatment. Methadone maintenance treatment has been proven to be one of the most effective, and safe ways to stop opiate addiction.

According to the US National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, methadone maintenance treatment has been proven to be non-sedating and safe, so much so that it is indicated for pregnant women addicted to heroin. Narcotic addiction is defined as a chronic medical disorder, and methadone maintenance treatment coupled with social services is the most effective treatment for narcotic addiction.