Proper Methadone Detox Methods

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is John Bosworth. I'm a licensed mental health counselor in Saint Petersburg, Florida. I'd like to talk a little bit about the proper methods for methadone detox. In the past, individuals and actually today we have two methods that we can go about to detox, and one of those is probably the most unpleasant that's cold turkey; where we, where we, literally stop taking whatever we're taking and we, you know, for anywhere for two to four, five days, we go through very, very unpleasant side effects; irritation, agitation, you know, psychosis in some cases. The cold turkey method for methadone or any other opioids, opioids or opioids can be very, very dangerous because of people have been taking them a long time. Their body has built up a huge tolerance to the methadone or to the opioid and with that tolerance when you withdraw the medication or the substance cold turkey somebody can, you know, go into convulsions or shock or actually even die. So, we don't want to do that really with methadone or any other opioids, but the second treatment option is usually a little bit more; a little bit easier, a little bit less risky and that could be using drug therapy like Suboxone. Suboxone tends to be a really helpful drug in that it can be done on an outpatient basis with the supervision of a physician or another mental health or health care professional. Basically, it provides minimal discomfort and risk to the individual, and how it works, basically is that it blocks the receptors of the actual opioids. So, you're still getting; the body feels like it's still getting the actual drug without the high or the rush of the extra opioid, but the main advantage is that it's very much less risky and a lot easier on the individual that's actually going through the detox. Inpatient facilities utilizing other drug therapy and combinations of cognitive behavioral therapy and support such as the twelve steps is actually another way to go as far as detox from methadone or from any other opioids. My name is John Bosworth and we are talking about the proper methods of detox from methadone."