From: pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) Subject: Using Methadone To Detox (The Whole Story) Date: 1996/09/13 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard HOW TO USE METHADONE TO DETOX FROM HEROIN ADDICTION Okay, here is the deal. Basically there are two types of Methadone detox, the long term detox and the short term one. The one you should opt for, if you can, is the short term detox. And here is how it works. Let's say you are addicted to a certain amount of heroin every day. Depending on the size of your habit, the amounts listed below will vary. So for arguments sake, let's say you are using an amount of heroin that will require 40 mgs. of Meth to satisfy initially. What you do is you start out using 30 to 40 mgs of Meth the first day. The next few days you may have to increase it depending on how you feel. But once you are "stable" you need to stop increasing the Meth dose. After about 4 to 5 days of this, you need to start cutting down on the Meth. If you started with 40 mgs, you need to cut it down by 5 mgs each day for the next six days, until you get to 10 mgs. If you are using 60 mgs for a bigger heroin habit, you need to cut down over a slightly longer period or make a 7 mgs cut each day. The idea is to get yourself down to 10 mgs within 10 days of starting this whole process. When you get to 10 mgs., try taking that dose and cutting it down to 5 mgs, or 7 mgs, whatever. Once you get to 5 mgs, you are almost ready to stop. You may want to cut down to 2.5 mgs if you need to. But within 14 days you should be done. You may want to stretch this out for 21 days if you really have to, but you should not push it further than that! The reason why this type of short term detox works with far less pain than going cold is that, although Methadone is a semi-synthetic narcotic similar to Morphine or Heroin, there is enough of a molecular difference that it can be used to "satisfy" your heroin habit, while being different enough that your body will not get sufficiently addicted to the Meth if you follow the advice I've given above. BUT if you keep using Methadone beyone 14 to 21 days, you will start to get habituated to it, and like everyone will tell you, the detox from Meth, although milder than Heroin withdrawal, is much longer and more annoying. For a long term detox, you really need to be on a program and you should expect to be there for a year or more. You can have the program bring you down in itsy bitsy little increments. Personally, I think it's a pain in the ass, and you suffer more when you get down to the 5 to 10 mgs. stage anyway. So as a bad Wall Street stock broker would say, "go short young man/woman." That's the story. Gizmo ================================================================= From: (Peter McDermott) Subject: Re: Using Methadone To Detox (The Whole Story) Date: 1996/09/15 newsgroups: alt.drugs.hard In article <51c5tf$27d@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com>, pez@manhattan.com (Gizmo) wrote: >The reason why this type of short term detox works with far less pain >than going cold is that, although Methadone is a semi-synthetic >narcotic similar to Morphine or Heroin, there is enough of a molecular >difference that it can be used to "satisfy" your heroin habit, while >being different enough that your body will not get sufficiently >addicted to the Meth if you follow the advice I've given above. I don't really wanna comment on your remarks about dosage, other than to say that I think it's really a personal thing, and different people will need different regimes. However, the above paragraph is somewhat misleading. The real reason that methadone works better for detox has nothing to do with it being synthetic. It's because of methadone's long half-life. Heroin has a half-life of ten minutes (ie, 50% of the drug is evacuated from the body in ten minutes) whereas the half-life of methadone is twenty-four hours. As a result, methadone lets you down more gently rather than throwing you into that crashing pain of heroin withdrawal.