Judges Behaving Badly

 

Methadone and buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorders saves lives. Over five decades, we’ve accumulated more studies to support this treatment than any other medication, device, or intervention that I can think of. And yet, opioid use disorder appears to be the only disease where medically untrained people dictate medical treatment. The above memo from a judge of the 24^th District Court in North Carolina illustrates this all too well.

Let’s change that sentence in the middle of Judge Ginn’s memo: “Therefore, effective immediately, the use of insulin as a treatment for diabetes will no longer be allowed as a part of any probationary sentence in the 24^th Judicial District.”

It wouldn’t make any sense, would it? People would wonder why a judge was involved in a patient’s medical care. They might even be tempted to believe a judge had no authority to dictate medical care.

I worked in Boone, North Carolina, when this memo was issued, and it caused a great deal of suffering for patients. These patients, contrary to the judge’s beliefs, were doing well on medication-assisted treatments. They were no longer injecting drugs or committing crimes to support their active addiction. Their involvement with criminal justice system almost always pre-dated their entry into treatment. Yet the judge proclaimed they must stop the very medications that were helping them become productive members of society again!

I wrote letters of advocacy and information, citing studies that support MAT. I encouraged patients, and told them to expect their lawyer to advocate for them on this issue. The patients said their lawyers often advised them just to do what would make the judge happy. Patients, understandably, were timid about pushing against a judge with so much power over their lives.

Ironically, many of the people Judge Ginn thought were doing well in his court were also our patients. It was widely known that probation officers’ drug tests didn’t detect methadone or buprenorphine at that time. Unless the offender told the truth about being in treatment on buprenorphine or methadone, the court never knew. I’d estimate that dozens of people successfully passed through Judge Ginn’s court while being treated with buprenorphine or methadone, without him ever knowing about it, due to inadequate drug testing. The people who told the truth were penalized by being told to quit life-saving medication.

I know Judge Ginn is now retired, but I suspect attitudes and beliefs of the judiciary in that area haven’t changed much.

One of the opioid treatment programs in the area tried to advocate for their patients, by seeking some sort of censure against Judge Ginn, but I don’t know what came from that.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) both strongly recommend expanding opioid addiction treatment with medications to criminal justice participants. Congress just passed a bill that recommends spending money to treat opioid addiction in jails and prisons That bill pushes for people with opioid use disorder to get treatment instead of jail sentences. Experts everywhere advocate for expanding medication-assisted treatments to patients involved with the legal system, whether in jail, on parole, or on probation.

All of these actions are great. But Judge Ginn is an example of the many obstacles to implementation of the evidence-based treatments that experts recommend. Particularly in rural Appalachian areas, people in positions of power actively thwart life-saving medical treatments.

I don’t understand how judges can get away with such irresponsible actions. To me, it appears Judge Ginn practiced medicine without a license. If I somehow lost my medical license but continued to practice, I’d be committing a felony.

What if Judge Ginn commanded a patient stop buprenorphine or methadone, and the patient died in a relapse? Would Judge Ginn have any liability, civil or criminal?

I don’t know what can be done about judges like him, but don’t they have to answer to someone? Are they appointed, or elected? If elected, perhaps we need to start understanding judges’ positions on medical treatments before we vote for them.

A Really Good Book – For Free

If you haven’t read CASA’s (Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, at Columbia University) masterpiece publication from June, 2012, titled “Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap between Science and Practice,” you should do so. This publication can be downloaded for free, and has essential information about addiction and its treatment. http://www.casacolumbia.org/addiction-research/reports/addiction-medicine

Casa also has other free and informative publications about other issues, like how to reduce the risk of addiction in teens (“The Importance of Family Dinners” series), the cost and impact of untreated addiction on society (“Shoveling Up”), substance abuse and the U.S. prison population (“Behind Bars” series), and the availability of drugs on the internet ( “You’ve got Drugs” series). All of these contain useful and thought-provoking data.

“Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap between Science and Practice” outlines all aspects of what is wrong with addiction treatment in the U.S., along with recommendations about how we can fix this broken system. When it was published in June of 2012, I thought it would be would be widely read and discussed. However, I’ve only heard it mentioned once, and that was at an ASAM meeting. I wish popular press, so eager to write sensationalistic pieces about addiction, would write more fact-based information.

Every politician should read it. Every parent should read it. Physicians and treatment center personnel should read it. Anyone who is concerned about the extent of addiction and its poor treatment in the U.S. should read it.

CASA describes their key findings of the drawbacks of the U.S. system – or non-system – of addiction treatment. This nation is doing many things wrong, to the detriment of people afflicted with addiction, their families and their communities. Our mistakes are based on ignorance, misperceptions, and prejudice. All of these impede our ability to help our people with addiction. The CASA report describes these factors and how they have contributed to our present situation.
Our nation hasn’t waged a war on drugs, but rather on people who use drugs.

The CASA report describes how public opinion about addiction isn’t based on science. Science proves addiction is a brain disease, yet this fact is still debated. We know that continued use of addicting substances alters the structure and function of the brain, affecting judgment and behavior about the continued use of drugs even when bad consequences occur. We know that half of the risk for developing addiction is determined by genetic makeup. Yet surveys show that about a third of U.S. citizens still feel addiction is due to lack of willpower and self-control. Why are public attitudes so disconnected from science?

Addiction is a complicated diagnosis, existing as it does at the end of the continuum from occasional drug use to regular use to compulsive use. People often compare a drug user with a drug addict. They say that since the drug user was able to stop when he wanted that the drug addict should be able to stop when he wanted. This compares apples to oranges. If someone can comfortably stop using drugs when given a good enough reason to do so, this person isn’t an addict. They may be a drug abuser, a problem user, and at high risk for addiction, but they haven’t crossed the line into uncontrollable use.

The CASA report pointed out that most addiction treatment and prevention isn’t done by physicians and health professionals. Most addiction treatment is provided by counselors who, for the most part, aren’t required to have any medical training. Only six states require a bachelor’s degree to become an addiction counselor, and only one (Alabama, go figure) requires a master’s degree.

Even when physicians are involved in the treatment of addiction, most of us have very little, if any, training in medical school or residencies about addiction prevention or treatment. Ironically, most of our training focuses on treating the consequences of addiction.

In medical school and residency, I spent countless hours learning about the proper treatment of cirrhosis, gastritis, anemia, pancreatitis, dementia, and peripheral neuropathy from alcohol addiction. I had little if any training about how to treat alcohol addiction, and none about how to prevent it.

We know brief interventions by physicians during office visits can reduce problem drinking and are an effective way to prevent problems before they occur. Yet few physicians are trained to do this brief intervention. Even if they are trained, primary care physicians and physician extenders are being asked to do more and more at each visit with patients, and asked to do it with less and less time. Primary care providers may not be adequately paid for screening and brief intervention for problem drinking and drugging, and valuable opportunities are lost. Yet that same patient may consume hundreds of thousands of healthcare dollars during only one hospital admission for medical consequences of problem alcohol use.

When I practiced in primary care, I often thought about how I never got to the root of the problem. I would – literally – give patients with serious addiction strikingly absurd advice. “Please stop injecting heroin. You got that heart valve infection from injecting heroin and you need to quit.” I could see it was ineffective, but I didn’t know any better way at the time. I assumed if there was a better way to treat addiction, I’d have learned about it in my training.

Wrong. The doctors who trained me couldn’t teach what they didn’t know themselves.

In my Internal Medicine residency, I admitted many patients to the hospital for endocarditis (infected heart valve) contracted from IV heroin use. Each time, this required six month of intravenous antibiotics. Back then we kept such patients in the hospital the whole time. You can imagine the cost of a six week hospital stay, not that these addicts had any money to pay. Just a fraction of that amount could have paid for treatment at a methadone clinic, the most effective way to treat heroin addiction, and prevent dozens of medical problems.

But I never referred them to the methadone clinic available in that city. I didn’t know anything about methadone or the medical-assisted treatment of opioid addiction, and apparently my attending physicians, responsible for my training, didn’t know about it either. It was a shame, because in those years, the late 1980’s, we were making new diagnoses of HIV almost daily among IV drug users. Since then, a study showed a patient using IV heroin drops his risk of contracting HIV by more than threefold if he enrolls in a methadone clinic.

I didn’t learn about the evidence-based treatment of opioid addiction until I agreed to work at a methadone clinic for a few days, covering for a friend of mine when he wanted to go on vacation. I was amazed to learn about decades of evidence showing the benefits of such treatment.

Most addiction-related medical expenses are paid for from public funds. In fact, over ten percent of all federal, state, and local government dollars are spent on risky substance use and addiction problems. Sadly, over 95% of this money is spent on the consequences of drug use and abuse. Only 2% is spent on treatment or prevention.

Untreated addiction costs mightily. People with untreated addiction incur more health care costs than nearly any other group. An estimated one third of all costs from inpatient medical treatment are related to substance abuse and addiction. Untreated addicts (I include alcohol addicts with drug addicts) go to the hospital more often, are admitted for longer than people without addiction, and require more expensive heath care than hospitalized non-addicts. The complications these people suffer could be from underlying poor physical health and lack of regular preventive healthcare, but most of the cost is incurred treating the medical problems directly caused by addiction and risky substance use.

Family members of people with untreated addiction have higher health costs, too. Families of people with addiction have 30% higher health care costs than families with no addicted member. I presume that’s from the stress of living and dealing with a loved one in active addiction. Often family members are so caught up in trying to control the chaos caused by active addiction that they don’t take time for routine health visits.

The costs of untreated addiction aren’t only financial. Addiction and risky drug use are the leading causes of preventable deaths in the U.S. Around 2.9 million people died in 2009, and well over a half million of these deaths were attributable to tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Overdose deaths alone have increased five-fold since 1990.

We know addiction is a chronic disease, yet we spend far less on it than other chronic diseases.
For example, the CASA report says that in the U.S., around 26 million people have diabetes, and we spend nearly 44 billion dollars per year to treat these patients. Similarly, just over 19 million have cancer, and we spend over 87 billion for treatment of that disease. In the U.S., 27 million people have heart disease, and we spend 107 billion dollars on treatment.

But when it comes to addiction, we spend only 28 billion to treat the estimated 40.3 million people with addiction, and that includes nicotine!

Most of the money we do spend is paid by public insurance. For other chronic diseases, about 56% of medical expenses are covered by private payers, meaning private insurance or self-pay. But for addiction treatment, only 21% of expenses are paid from private insurance or self-pay. This suggests that private insurance companies aren’t adequately covering the expense of addiction treatment. Indeed, patients being treated with private insurance for addiction are three to six times less likely to get specialty addiction treatment than those with public insurance such as Medicaid or Medicare. Hopefully we will see a change since the parity law was passed. (which told insurance companies they had to cover mental health and substance addiction to the same degree they cover other health problems)

In the U.S., we don’t treat addiction as the public health problem that it is. Some people still don’t believe it’s an illness but rather a moral failing. Doctors, not knowing any better, often have an attitude of therapeutic nihilism, feeling that addiction treatment doesn’t work and it’s hopeless to try.

Families and medical professionals often expect addiction to behave like an acute illness. We may mistakenly think addiction should be resolved with a single treatment episode. If that episode fails, it means treatment is worthless. Families want to put their addicted loved one into a 28-day treatment program and expect them to be fixed forever when they get out. They’re disappointed and angry if their loved one relapses.

This reminds me of an elderly man I treated for high blood pressure many years ago. I gave him a month’s prescription of blood pressure medication, and when he came back, his blood pressure was good. I was pleased, and I wanted to keep him on the medication. He was angry. He said he was going to find another doctor. He thought the one prescription should have cured his high blood pressure so that he would never have to take pills again, and was disappointed with my treatment.
If we keep our same attitude toward addiction treatment, we are doomed to be as disappointed as my patient with high blood pressure. Addiction behaves like a chronic disease, with period of remission and episodes of relapse.

We have a lot of work to do. As this CASA publication shows, we have to change public attitudes with scientific information and do a much better job of training physicians and other health care providers. We should pay for evidence-based, high-quality addiction treatment, rather than spend billions on the medical problems caused by addiction as we are now doing.

Check out this landmark publication at CASA’s website: http://www.casacolumbia.org

Pregnant Women Using Drugs

Pregnant addicts are the most stigmatized group in U.S. society. Even other drug addicts regard pregnant addicts with scorn. But the nature of addiction is the loss of control – pregnant addicts usually do want to stop using drugs, but have lost the power to do so without help. And even if they do seek help, pregnant women face special barriers to proper care. The stigmatization alone is enough to keep many women from getting help. They face overwhelming shame and blame from society and from their own families. Pregnant women don’t tell their obstetricians about their addiction, for fear they will be treated harshly by the professionals on whom they must depend to deliver medical care. I’ve already blogged about the atrocious misinformation some obstetricians accept as true about opioids addiction and treatment during pregnancy.  Female addicts, scared and ashamed to ask for help, try to hide their addiction as well as they can, and hope for the best.

If a pregnant addict does seek help, many treatment programs won’t accept her into treatment, because she is too high risk. Addiction treatment programs sometimes don’t want the liability of a pregnant addict.

At one of the opioid treatment programs where I used to work, a woman came for admission in her fifth month of pregnancy. I tried to be gentle as I asked her why she’d waiting so long to get help. She laughed without humor and told me she’d been turned away from three other treatment facilities. The first was an inpatient residential treatment program that turned her away because she was addicted to opioids. They told her if they took her into their treatment program, she would have to undergo withdrawal, because they did not “believe” in methadone or buprenorphine (Subutex). And if she went into withdrawal, she could miscarry.

They directed her to an inpatient detoxification program that also declined to admit her because they didn’t want her to miscarry while in their facility. They (correctly) referred her to an opioid treatment program. The first opioid treatment program offered only methadone, and since she preferred buprenorphine, they referred her to the clinic where I worked. This patient had (correctly) heard new studies showed less severe withdrawal in babies born to moms on buprenorphine (Subutex) compared to moms on methadone.  That clinic then referred her to our clinic, since we do use buprenorphine. All of this took a few weeks, delaying her entry to treatment. The treatment programs made the right decisions, but addiction treatment is so patchwork that it took time for her to ping-pong from place to place until she found the treatment she needed.

Pregnant women fear they will lose custody of their children if they admit to being addicted and ask for help. Sadly, in some counties in my state, their fear is well-grounded. Some women are told they will lose their children because they have enrolled in medication-assisted treatment with methadone or buprenorphine, even though it’s the treatment of choice for opioid-addicted pregnant women. In most cases, treatment center staff can act as advocates, and talk to social service workers who may not be well-informed about addiction treatment. Punishing a mom for getting help doesn’t help anyone. Word spreads in addict social networks, making other women less likely to get help for addiction.

Often, the pregnant addict’s husband or partner is also addicted. He may try to keep her away from drug addiction treatment, fearing loss of control over her, or he may feel like he’ll be asked to stop using drugs too. Even if she’s able to go to treatment, having a drug-using partner makes it more difficult to stop using herself.

Women, pregnant or not, tend to have childcare issues. If they want to get help, who will watch the children while they attend treatment?

Despite the difficulties faced by pregnant addicts, most want desperately to deliver a healthy baby. We know from several studies that harsh confrontation predicts addiction treatment failure in pregnant women. That is, if treatment facility personnel, obstetricians, nurses or any other member of the treatment team tries to blame and scare a pregnant addict into stopping drug use, it backfires. Pregnant women tend leave treatment when they are treated harshly, and have worse outcomes than women who stay in treatment.

I’ve written blogs about the negative attitudes some medical professionals have toward pregnant opioid addicts who come for treatment with buprenorphine (Subutex) or methadone. Thankfully, that’s not a universal attitude. Recently an obstetrician referred her patient to us, calling ahead to speed things along. I called her back after I saw the patient, and we had a cordial conversation which I appreciate all the more in view of negativity I’ve experienced in the past.

I thought again about the topic of opioid-addicted pregnant addicts because of an article in my most recent issue of Journal of Addiction Medicine. This article described the outcome of a study of opioid-addicted pregnant patients in rural Vermont. Since methadone and buprenorphine (Subutex) are the treatments of choice for these patients, the study looked to see if better access to these treatments improved outcomes. The results showed, not surprisingly, improved access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction in pregnant addicts improved the health outcomes for both mothers and babies. Earlier research showed the same result, but this was a rural group, underrepresented in past studies.

Meyer, M, et. al, “Development of a Substance Abuse Program for Opioid-Dependent Nonurban Pregnant Women Improves Outcome,” Journal of Addiction Medicine, Vol. 6 (2) pp.124-130.

New Controls on Opioid Prescribing

As discussed in my last blog entry, prescription monitoring programs will help diminish our present-day epidemic of prescription opioid addiction, but these PMPs are just a start. State and federal governments are passing other laws, with the intent to reduce pain pill addiction.

For example, over the summer, Ohio enacted legislation aimed at physicians who primarily see patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain. Doctors prescribing opioids for more than 50% of their patients are now required to take periodic continuing medical education classes about the safe prescribing of opioids. These physicians are required to take a minimum of twenty hours of training every two years. Ohio also now says that physicians who own pain practices need to register with their medical board and undergo site inspections, as well as comply with patient-tracking requirements. Six other states now mandate doctors get yearly continuing education on pain management and the safe prescribing of opioids to maintain licensure from their medical boards.

Some doctors protest these measures, but this training is intensely needed. More than ten years ago, CASA (Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University) did a study that showed physicians are poorly trained to recognize and treat addictive disorders. Of doctors who were surveyed about the training they received in their residency programs, thirty-nine percent received training on how to identify drug diversion, and sixty-one percent received training on identifying prescription drug addiction. Seventy percent of the doctors surveyed said they received instruction on how to prescribe controlled substances. (1)

These findings are appalling. Thirty percent of doctors received no training on how to prescribe controlled substances in their residency programs.  Nearly a third of the doctors leaving residency – last stop for most doctors before being loosed upon the populace to practice medicine with little to no oversight – had no training on how to prescribe these potentially dangerous drugs. Sixty-two percent leaving residency had training on pain management. This means the remaining thirty-eight percent had no training on the treatment of pain.

 These doctors weren’t in specialty care. They were in family practice, internal medicine, OB/GYN, psychiatry, and orthopedic surgery. The study included physicians of all ages (fifty-three percent were under age fifty), all races (though a majority at seventy-five percent were white, three other races were represented), and all types of locations (thirty-seven percent urban, thirty percent suburban, with the remainder small towns or rural areas). This study shows that medical training in the U.S. does not, at present, do a good job of teaching doctors about two diseases that causes much disability and suffering: pain and addiction.

 Despite having relatively little training in indentifying and treating prescription pill addiction, physicians tend to be overly confident in their abilities to detect such addictions. CASA found that eighty percent of the surveyed physicians felt they were qualified to identify both drug abuse and addiction. However, in a 1998 CASA study, Under the Rug: Substance Abuse and the Mature Woman, physicians were given a case history of a 68 year old woman, with symptoms of prescription drug addiction. Only one percent of the surveyed physicians presented substance abuse as a possible diagnosis.  In a similar study, when presented with a case history suggestive of an addictive disorder, only six percent of primary care physicians listed substance abuse as a possible diagnosis. (2)

Besides being poorly educated about treatments for patients with addiction, most doctors aren’t comfortable having frank discussions about a patient’s drug misuse or addiction. Most physicians fear they will provoke anger or shame in their patients. Physicians may feel disgust with addicted patients and find them unpleasant, demanding, or even frightening. Conversely, doctors can feel too embarrassed to ask seemingly “nice” people about addiction. In a CASA study titled, Missed Opportunity, forty-seven percent of physicians in primary care said it was difficult to discuss prescription drug addiction and abuse with their patients for whom they had prescribed such drugs.

From this data, it’s clear physicians are poorly educated about the disease of addiction, as well as the safe treatment of pain. Medical schools and residencies need to critically re-evaluate their teaching priorities to include training in pain management and addiction. Until that can be done, states need to mandate yearly training for physicians on these topics, because most practicing physicians never got adequate training on these topics.

Most doctors are not happy about these government mandates. It’s human nature to resent being told you need more training, especially if it’s at your own expense. It’s difficult to get time off work for trainings and it’s inconvenient. Yet the alternative – no increase in training for practicing physicians – isn’t acceptable. The addiction rate is too high in this country to ignore, or to avoid taking actions.

Not all of the new state mandates are good ideas.

The state of Washington passed a law in 2010 that took effect in July of this year. It says only pain management specialists can prescribe more than the equivalent of 120mg of morphine per day for a patient. Non-pain management doctors cannot prescribe more than this, by law.

I think it’s alarming when lawmakers set dose limits for any medication. I don’t know of any other medication in any other state that has a dose limit set by non-physicians.

I assume Washington’s lawmakers had good intentions. They’re concerned about the rising numbers of opioid overdose deaths in their state. They based the cut-off of 120mg of morphine on a study (Annals of Internal Medicine, Jan 19, 2010) that showed patients taking more than 100mg of morphine, or its equivalent, were nine times more likely to have a drug overdose than those prescribe 20mg or less. But these lawmakers aren’t equipped to understand the real life complications that may occur due to this law. Government officials have already admitted they don’t know how patients will be able afford to see pain specialists, or even be able to find a specialist, since there aren’t enough pain specialists in that state. The government’s website explaining the new rules (3) also admits there are no lists of physicians pain specialists. I couldn’t find the state’s definition of a “pain specialist” on this website, so there will be confusion as to what this even means. If it means only doctors who are board-certified in pain management, that will surely be a very small number. Some doctors have said they will avoid prescribing opioids at all, given the additional regulatory burdens.

Other critics of this new law say it gives false gives reassurances to patients and doctors that doses under the 120mg cutoff are safe. We know that’s not true. Many times the danger lies in other medications, like benzodiazepines, that are prescribed with opioids.

This same law goes into great detail about how pain patients are to be screened before opioids for chronic pain are started, and how patients who are prescribed opioids are to be managed. Patients must be screened for past addiction, and for depression and anxiety disorders. The law outlines how patients are to be followed by their doctors. Washington’s lawmakers also mandate random urine drug screening of patients being prescribed opioids, and written patient agreements. The law gets in to specific details about what needs to be in the patient monitoring agreement.

Some doctors feel the government has overstepped its bounds and will interfere with physicians’ clinical judgments. Patients are already complaining that they have great difficulty finding doctors who will prescribe opioids to adequately treat their pain.

I support most legislation that helps physicians identify and treat opioid addiction, but I think Washington’s law has gone too far. Balanced, rational decisions are urgently needed. If we over-react out of fear, the pendulum will swing too far to the other side. Over-regulation could have unintended consequences including having patient in acute or pain or with cancer pain unable to get an adequate prescription for opioids.

1. 1. Missed Opportunity: A National Survey of Primary Care Physicians and Patients on Substance Abuse, Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, April 2000. Also available online at http://www.casacolumbia.org  
2.  Under the Rug: Substance Abuse and the Mature Woman, Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 1998. Available online at http://www.casacolumbia.org
3.  http://www.doh.wa.gov/hsqa/Professions/PainManagement/

Tennessee, the State of Malignant Denial

 

For the last ten years, local officials in the small towns of Eastern Tennessee have been denying the presence of opioid addiction in their midst. Ironically, as the map shows, Eastern Tennessee has one of the very highest rates of opioid addiction in all of the U.S.

National Survey of Drug Use and Health

   

Over the last ten years, various treatment centers, wanting to treat these addicts with methadone and/or buprenorphine programs, have tried to open in this area. In a show of NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard), town officials vote for zoning changes meant to make it essentially impossible to get approval to open such clinics. Tennessee officials say it will bring drug addicts to the area.

From the Kingsport, Tennessee Times-News, 3/18/09,

“The Church Hill Board of Mayor and Aldermen unanimously approved the first reading Tuesday of an ordinance which, in essence, makes it almost impossible for a methadone clinic to locate within the city limits.

Earlier this month, the Planning Commission recommended the ordinance, which restricts methadone clinics and drug treatment facilities to areas of the city that are zoned M-1 (manufacturing). Without the ordinance, methadone clinics and drug treatment facilities would be permitted in any area of the city zoned to allow medical uses.”

“I think we’re all in the consensus that we don’t want it anywhere,” the alderman said (name deleted).

Similar laws have been passed in Johnson City, Tennessee.

So what happens to untreated pain pill addicts?

There aren’t any studies following pain pill addicts long-term, but we do have studies of heroin addicts.

They die.

Methadone maintenance has been shown to reduce death rates by factors ranging from three fold to sixty-three fold. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

In one study, heroin addicts enrolled in methadone treatment were one-quarter as likely to die by heroin overdose or suicide as were heroin addicts not in methadone treatment. This study followed 296 heroin addicts for more than 15 years. In another study, a group of heroin addicts were followed over twenty years. One-third died within that time. Of the survivors, 48% were enrolled in a methadone program for treatment. The authors of the study concluded that heroin addiction is a chronic disease with a high fatality rate, and that methadone maintenance offered a significant benefit.

We suspect, but don’t know for sure, that pain pill addicts will have similar rates of death, since both groups are addicted to opioids. Studies are being done now, following pain pill addicts to see if their outcome will be similar to heroin addicts.

The young addicts of Eastern Tennessee are paying a heavy price for the denial of local officials.

1. Caplehorn JR, Dalton MS, et. al., Methadone maintenance and addicts’ risk of fatal heroin overdose. Substance Use and Misuse, 1996 Jan, 31(2):177-196. In this study of heroin addicts, the addicts in methadone treatment were one-quarter as likely to die by heroin overdose or suicide. This study followed two hundred and ninety-six methadone heroin addicts for more than fifteen years.
2. Clausen T, Waal H, Thoresen M, Gossop M; Mortality among opiate users: opioid maintenance therapy, age and causes of death. Addiction 2009; 104(8) 1356-62. This study looked at the causes of death for opioid addicts admitted to opioid maintenance therapy in Norway from 1997-2003. The authors found high rates of overdose deaths both prior to admission and after leaving treatment. Older patients retained in treatment died from medical reasons, other than overdose.
3.  Goldstein A, Herrera J, Heroin addicts and methadone treatment in Albuquerque: a year follow-up. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 1995 Dec; 40 (2): p. 139-150. A group of heroin addicts were followed over twenty years. One-third died within that time, and of the survivors, 48% were on a methadone maintenance program. The author concluded that heroin addiction is a chronic disease with a high fatality rate, and methadone maintenance offered a significant benefit.
4. Gronbladh L, Ohlund LS, Gunne LM, Mortality in heroin addiction: Impact of methadone treatment, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica Volume 82 (3) p. 223-227. Treatment of heroin addicts with methadone maintenance resulted in a significant drop in mortality, compared to untreated heroin addicts. Untreated addicts had a death rate 63 times expected for their age and gender; heroin addicts maintained on methadone had a death rate of 8 times expected, and most of that mortality was from diseases acquired prior to treatment with methadone.
5. Scherbaum N, Specka M, et.al., Does maintenance treatment reduce the mortality rate of opioid addicts? Fortschr Neurol Psychiatr, 2002, 70(9):455-461. Opioid addicts in continuous treatment with methadone had a much lower mortality rate (1.6% per year) than opioid addicts who left treatment (8.1% per year).
6. Zanis D, Woody G; One-year mortality rates following methadone treatment discharge. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 1998: vol.52 (3) 257-260. Five hundred and seven patients in a methadone maintenance program were followed for one year. In that time, 110 patients were discharged and were not in treatment anywhere. Of these patients, 8.2% were dead, mostly from heroin overdose. Of the patients retained in treatment, only 1% died. The authors conclude that even if patients enrolled in methadone maintenance treatment have a less-than-desired response to treatment, given the high death rate for heroin addicts not in treatment, these addicts should not be kicked out of the methadone clinic.