Heroin addicts? brains can?t function without their “hit,” experts say.
Methadone is an opiate and a painkiller that prevents users from getting high on heroin by competing with the much more potent opiates for the body?s opiate receptors, said Christopher Welsh, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Those receptors are part of the body?s pain-suppression network and can be triggered by opium and its derivatives, including heroin.
“What methadone does is binds to the receptor and activates it. But then it makes it harder for other opiates to function,” he said.
The brain chemistry of heroin addicts can be seriously altered by the addiction so they cannot function normally without an opiate in their system, Welsh said.
Some former addicts have taken methadone since the 1960s and can perform their jobs and live a full life.
Maryland licenses 26,000 practitioners to handle controlled dangerous substances ? including methadone, according to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Some methadone users include non-addicts taking the drug for treatment of chronic pain.
Welsh said a lot of misinformation about the drug leads people to think methadone users are addicts, but the difference is that addicts commit self-destructive acts to fuel their addiction and that addiction interferes with their ability to function.
“Whether there?s astigma or not, perception is reality when it comes to communities and drug treatment,” said Michael Gimbel, drug addictions counselor for Sheppard Pratt Health Systems and former Baltimore County drug czar. “You have to be sensitive to communities because even if the perception is wrong, it can have negative impacts on the people coming into a community for treatment.”
