Users offered different withdrawal medication
Critics ask why option wasn’t available earlier
Drug users who didn’t respond well to a reformulated methadone treatment introduced in B.C. four years ago now have access to a medication that may work as well as the original version for some people.
Nearly 18,000 people were switched from methadone to Methadose in 2014. However, drug users say they weren’t consulted before the change to a medication that failed to keep painful withdrawal symptoms at bay for 24 hours.
The new option, called Metadol-D, has recently been offered to Methadose patients, though advocates are questioning why a drug that’s been around for years wasn’t made available sooner.
Dr. Christy Sutherland, who treats substance users in the Downtown Eastside, said Methadose caused substance users to become “dope sick” in about 14 hours, instead of 24 hours, leading to withdrawal symptoms that had many seeking intravenous drugs such as heroin on the streets during a crisis fuelled by the deadly opioid fentanyl.
“Patients would always say to me, ‘It doesn’t have legs.’ And what they meant was that it didn’t last the 24 hours,” she said of Methadose. “They would wake up each morning in withdrawal, with cravings, with sweats, sometimes with diarrhea, with pain. So they would be quite desperate for their dose that day. That led to a lot of instability for people.”
Sutherland said she has switched many patients from Methadose to Metadol-D, adding it seems to work well.
Laura Shaver, who heads the B.C. Association of People on Methadone, said the former provincial government discontinued the original methadone treatment without consultation.
“For some of us who had been clean off doing any opioids other than the medication, turning back into fullblown needle-using junkies because of a decision that was not ours is absolutely wrong and irresponsible. And many people have died because of it,” she said.
The province has said the switch was believed to be a better option because it has a longer shelf life, and was less prone to dispensing errors because pharmacists don’t have to compound it.