METHADONE CAN WEAN ADDICTS OFF OTHER DRUGS, HELP WITH PAIN

Methadone is a synthetic opiate. German scientists created the drug
in 1937 as an easier-to-administer and less potentially addictive
alternative to morphine to control pain during and after surgery.

Eli Lilly and Co. introduced methadone in the U.S. in 1947 as a
painkiller, but it became widely used, and best known, decades later
as a drug for weaning addicts off heroin.

Since the late 1990s, doctors have increasingly prescribed methadone
to patients who suffer from chronic or severe pain, and experts say
that widening availability has led to a rising death toll from
methadone overdoses. Nationally, overdose deaths involving methadone
rose from 831 in 1999 to 4,031 in 2004, according to the most recent
information available from the National Center for Health Statistics.

In North Carolina, methadone-related deaths rose nearly 10-fold
between 1999 and 2006. And in Rowan County, the drug was a factor in
almost half the overdose deaths between 2003 and 2005.

People who study overdose deaths and perform toxicology tests say
very few people are overdosing on the liquid form of the drug given
in methadone clinics. The vast majority are dying after taking too
much of the prescription version, they say.

A lot of those deaths, experts say, result from people taking
prescription drugs that aren't theirs for pain, or looking for a way
to a high, which methadone doesn't produce like other drugs.

But Kay Sanford, a public health epidemiologist in the Injury and
Violence Prevention Branch of the state Division of Public Health,
said that even patients legitimately prescribed methadone for pain
need to be under close medical supervision while getting used to the
drug, which reacts differently in different people.

Typical side effects of methadone include drowsiness and respiratory
depression.

In a public health advisory last year, the Food and Drug
Administration said signs of overdose may include trouble breathing
or shallow breathing, extreme tiredness or sleepiness, blurred
vision, inability to think, talk or walk normally and feeling faint,
dizzy or confused.

Sanford said a person who has overdosed on methadone might also be
snoring when he usually does not, a sign that it's getting hard to
breathe. Sanford said doctors need to stress to patients to keep
their prescriptions secure, especially if they have children or teens
in the house. "They need to tell patients that even a small dose of
methadone can be fatal to kids or teenagers," she said.

Pharmacists dispensing methadone should ask patients if they have
contact with children and adolescents and explain the dangers, she
said. Patients taking methadone need to be aware of its possible
hazards and the potentially lethal consequences of not following a
doctor's instructions, Sanford said.

"Some pills are more lethal than others, and methadone appears to be
more lethal than many narcotics," she said. "... Even an extra pill
or two of methadone can be lethal."

And for children and teenagers, she said, avoiding death by overdose
is "very simple: If you don't use drugs, don't start. If you do use
drugs, stop, get help."