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Sunday, March 4, 1973
While other countries, like Canada and the United States, already
had methadone maintenance programmes for heroin addicts, there was none in Hong Kong. The two pilot schemes then are being conducted to study if it
will prove useful or helpful in treating heroin addicts here.
Methadone is a synthetic drug discovered during the Second World
War. Its advantages over heroin are that it does not produce the euphoric
feeling experienced from heroin, blocks the craving for heroin and has a
longer lasting effect.
Also methadone use does not lead to tolerance so it is not necessary
to increase the dosage to maintain the same effect.
Steady Employment
A drug addict, after undergoing methadone treatment, will have
a chance, with social and rehabilitative counselling, to obtain steady
employment since he would not need to take heroin every four or five hours.
It follows from this that he can then readjust himself to live a normal life, having only to call once a day at any convenient time for his methadone.
There is also the possibility that once on methadone, a patient
may find he no longer needs to take a dosage daily and in this way, with
determination, may even give it up altogether in the long run.
Unlike some overseas programmes, participants in the Hong Kong programmes
are not given methadone to take home. They have to call daily at the
centre of treatment for their dosage. Urine screening is carried out to
see if they have reverted to heroin.
/After