MEASURING SUCCESS: PURELY A FUNCTION OF HOW YOU DEFINE IT

There’s been a lot of coverage to the statement of a prominent Scottish “drugs expert” to his alleged finding that “Methadone helps just 4%” (the headline of an Oct. 29 article in the Glasgow Sunday Herald). In essence, a group of methadone treatment admissions were assessed three years after starting treatment to see how many were “drug-free.” The outcome, which could have been predicted, read as follows in the introductory sentence: “A shocking new study has revealed the true extent of methadone programme failure in Scotland, with only a tiny proportion of addicts becoming drug-free through the heroin substitute.

Ignored by the “expert” and by the article is the fact that addiction is recognized by the World Health Organization and by governments throughout the world as a chronic, notoriously relapsing, eminently treatable but as yet incurable disease. To condemn methadone – or any medication used in treating any other chronic illness – if, in the words of this article, “it isn’t helping [patients] become drug-free” is simply misguided. Imagine using this yardstick for determining efficacy of insulin, or anti-hypertensives, or cardiac medications, or l-dopa, or anti-seizure medication, or . . . .

As with alcoholism, one measures success in treating opiate addiction one day at a time. Methadone helps restore health, enables productive social functioning and sharply reduces the spread of HIV-AIDS and other blood-borne diseases. It saves lives and yields enormous savings to the community.