Greetings, and welcome to the Methadone Education Project site. We hope you will look around, visit frequently, and let your colleagues know about this resource, which is intended primarily for medical providers.
We are a physician assistant and a medical librarian with a commitment to increasing awareness of methadone maintenance treatment to the medical provider community. Between us we've got several years of experience in the methadone maintenance/addiction/medical information fields, and we hope this site will help to promote safe and evidence-based awareness of opioid addiction and methadone treatment.
While steeped in myth, fear, and stigma, methadone maintenance treatment
for heroin and other opiate addiction is known to be effective, safe, and
cost-effective. Most clinicians, while having little training in or exposure to
opiate replacement therapy, encounter patients in their practice who are
engaged in such treatment.
With nearly 260,000 patients currently in methadone maintenance treatment in the United States, it's increasingly likely that providers will encounter patients enrolled in methadone maintenance in their practices. Some of the most compelling issues related to treating these patients are pregnancy, overdose risk, severe pain due to
misconceptions about methadone maintenance and pain control, cardiovascular,
psychiatric, obstetric, and infectious diseases, P450 metabolism, hepatitis, HIV, legal
and regulatory requirements, and individual/system biases leading to disparities
in care.
Please contact us and share with us your thoughts and concerns as we strive to offer you evidence-based information and support for your efforts to provide the best care possible to opioid dependent patients in your settings.
