Essay On Methadone

Russell Brand views addiction as a disease and he is well qualified to think so. He struggled with addiction. For 11 years he used heroine, cocaine, alcohol, and many other drugs. In 2002 he went to a rehabilitation center to get clean for 12 weeks. He believes drug addiction is an illness as a disease. And from what I understand he has taken the belief that you can be genetically predetermined to be addicted to something. And when you finally do drugs, you cannot get enough. He is able to own up to his mistakes.

According to Dr. Nutt addiction has something to do with the brain. He says “almost everyone in [England] drinks alcohol at some point in their life. But only 10% get addicted to it, and those 10% are different. ”According to Nutt, there are
According to the textbook Abnormal Psychology, methadone is “opioid, but it has less potent and less long-lasting effects then heroin when taken orally. The person depending on heroin takes methadone to reduce extreme negative withdrawal symptoms” (page 420). In the documentary, Russell Brand talks about methadone. He tells us that “about ten years ago [methadone] became the governments main method of treating addicts. What the government hoped was that if they gave the addicts methadone, they’d stop committing crimes to get money for drugs, and they would also stop sharing needles and getting HIV” (22:19). Brand views methadone as a “moving around the furniture on the titanic.” He doesn’t believe that it is treating the actual addiction, just proving the drug user with something else. Many of the addicts he talks to say the abuse methadone, and they don’t believe it is solving the problem. Brand also shares this view, and so does Professor Neil McKeganey. McKeganey conducts research at the Centre for Drug Misuse. According to his studies after three years of treatment, over 90% of patients were still dependent on methadone as well as other drugs