maintaining your addiction

Maintenance is when you take another opioid instead of heroin, "maintaining" your addiction. At face value, that doesn't sound very productive. But it is, and I will now tell you why. At the current time, there are two maintenance medications: methadone, and buprenorphine[Subutex/Suboxone]. There was a third, LAAM, legally no different than methadone, which worked for a whopping three days, but it was pulled from the market (in the USA) because of lack of interest and the potential for heart attacks it causes (one of the few opiates, if not the only, to have such problems.)

So why is maintenance important, and a very necessary option for heroin and opioid addiction treatment? Why isn't it "trading one addiction for another"? Because depending on the study you are looking at, nevermind anecdotal evidence, your chances of success at long-term abstinence are anywhere from 5-15%. No one knows why this is, at least not yet, but even after the withdrawals are over, "the easy part" according to just about anyone, the hard part begins - long term abstinence. "Willing it" just doesn't seem to work - believe me, I have tried. Your brain seemingly gets rewired to treat heroin like the most basic of your biological needs, lasting anywhere from 6-12 months to the rest of your life. It's like trying to "will" yourself not so sleep, or eat, or fuck. Over the long term.

So that's why it's important, because your chances of abstinence are so low, and people just want to live normal lives (and buprenorphine is a HUGE step towards that goal, as opposed to methadone, I will explain.) The important question many must be asking themselves is what makes it any different than heroin? There is a world of difference between methadone/buprenorphine and heroin/other opiates. The first and foremost is the duration of action and the time to peak effects. They both prevent withdrawals for 24 hours (or more), meaning you will not be constantly running around looking for a fix, and you won't have the ups and downs of heroin - once stablized, you will essentially just feel normal - not high, not low. Your body will adjust to the drug and make itself work as if it wasn't there. Ideally, at least, there are some very unique people out there. The fact that it takes nearly 2 hours to reach peak effects means you just simply don't get high from these drugs - unless you are "niave" to opiates, that is, in which case you wouldn't be going into maintenance. As I said, it let's people live normal lives - people on methadone, undetectable, are lawyers, engineers, even doctors. You would be amazed.