90% rise in people on methadone since 1998

THERE are almost 7,000 people in Ireland on methadone, a staggering 90% increase since 1998.

The State has become increasingly reliant on methadone to wean users off heroin, and accepts that the treatment is indefinite.

This is largely based on current detoxification statistics, which show that about one in 10 people who present themselves for detoxification become drug-free.

Dr Eamon Keenan, a consultant psychiatrist at the Drug Treatment Centre, claimed the methadone treatment statistics, published in the Drug Treatment Centre Board’s 2003 report, reflected the success of the treatment services in helping former addicts get their lives back on track.

“They can be on methadone forever and that’s okay,” said Dr Keenan. But Gerry Cooney, treatment co-ordinator at the Ruthland Centre in Dublin, believes the State is over-reliant on methadone and that the treatment should only be relied upon as a short-term fix.

Dr Keenan said the State had developed a practical response to the heroin problem. “We did have a very abstinence approach in the 1980s and early 1990s and that was not working,” he said.

It would be wonderful, he said, if everybody presenting to the treatment services could eventually be drug-free, but that was not the case.

He also rejected a claim by Mr Cooney that there were only a few places where addicts are given the opportunity to kick drugs altogether.

He said detoxification facilities were adequate and Ireland compared favourably with Britain in terms of the number of beds available.

“The reality is people don’t always get off drugs and we have to face that reality. The Government took a hard look at the situation and did adopt this harm reduction approach,” said Dr Keenan.

And, he said, the State was not just keeping a lid on the drug abuse problem - studies were showing that fewer young men were developing a heroin problem as a result of a variety of preventative initiatives taken in recent years.

Dr Keenan also believed that a mystery illness that caused the deaths of eight heroin addicts in 2000 was largely responsible for the two-fold increase in cocaine use since 2001.

Last year, 8.6% of people who used addiction services provided by the Drug Treatment Centre tested positive for cocaine, compared to 6.96% in 2002 and 4.43% in 2001.

Drug users were afraid of heroin and the pushers capitalised on the situation by encouraging them to use cocaine instead.

The problem was that addicts were injecting cocaine, a method that caused deep vein thrombosis and abscesses.

Because cocaine use often leads to a loss of inhibition, users were also exposing themselves to blood-borne and sexually-transmitted diseases.

Dr Keenan urged cocaine users to present themselves to treatment services that could provide psychological interventions.