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It's used to treat severe coughs, leukemia, depression, bi-polar disorder, and others.

The only things that Methadone has been proven to work for is the treatment of chronic pain, the treatment of heroin addicts and the treatment of general opiate addiction. Nothing else.
Why would a depressant be used to treat depression? While Methadone does suppress the cough reflex there are much safer alternatives, most notably Codeine. Why use something 30x stronger than morphine when codeine or even oxycondone would work with substantially less risk.
Can you point out any doctor that recommends treating any of these things with methadone? If someone has Leukemia, they might treat the chronic pain with Methadone, but not the Leukemia it self. Methadone isn't an effective treatment for any cancer.
Shane, I have a lot of respect for your financial and political ideas, but your medical knowledge needs work.

Chris

I ABSOLUTELY AM NOT!!! I am trying to explain to you that the reason for this is because THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE WRONG!!! And that something else is what the methodone is treating. There's been a TON of GOOD science done on this.

Then why isn't methadone used to treat any other problem other than chronic pain? If you want to argue that it's not a disease in the sense of cancer, I am fully with you, maybe disorder should be used instead? But to insist that an addicted person is perfectly normal and is simply choosing to destroy their lives, I think is absurd.
Maybe you could point me to some of that good science that argues against the disease model.

Chris

i haven't seen many people who favor prohibition on youtube but heres some comments from one of them.

basically he says there is an epidemic mental health crisis in the Netherlands because of drugs.
but in the Netherlands the drug use is half the percent than the US or Netherlands' neighboring countries and this includes heroin.

He is annoying so i started annoying him back. prohibition causes crime but he doesn't seem to listen.

anyhow his/her name is s13silly i made some comments on his/her channel. if you guys have any suggestions to get rid of him i would appreciate it. i left some comments on s13silly's channel feel free to correct me as well

It is perfectly legal to grow your own tobacco. Maybe it's not legal to grow and sell tobacco without a permit or whatever, but for personal use it is legal and lots of people do it.

This whole idea of legality is downright stupid and the fact that people think that growing your own tobacco is illegal shows the mentality it creates. People get this idea that things that are unsafe are illegal and things that are legal are safe (maybe with the exception of cigarettes). This mentality gets people in trouble. We should be allowed to act like grown-ups and make our own decisions.
Peter Schiff points out another area where the gov distorts the way people act for their safety, in this case monetary safety.
He observes that people do more research before buying a dvd player than they do when choosing a bank account. Because of the FDIC rules people don't bother holding their bank to any type of standard because they know the gov will bail them out.  Imagine if banks had to answer to their depositors as to how they invest and lend (after all, it is the depositors money). Do you think they would make as many risky loans? And anyway, the fdic is too much and is really just there to protect corporations. If the FDIC has to exist, it should be capped at 20k or even less. Who in the world has more than 20k in a bank account? The only people that would do that would be a corporation. Maybe a payroll account or an account used to pay for supplies and raw materials and such. But an individual with more than 20k would most likely have the money invested properly, not sitting in a bank account getting 1% interest.
So this is just one more way that gov protection is a cause of problems and not a solution.

Chris

BO-GUS!!!

Cancer is a disease. AIDS is a disease. Heart disease is a disease. Diseases you don't get rid of just by changing your behavior.

This is just a part of the bogus, whiny "Don't blame me it's not my fault" when it is mentality.

The ones I've talked to who have stopped disagree.

The really problematic addicts have an alternative diagnosis, such as depression, which IS a disease, and when the underlying disease is treated the addiction is no longer a problem.

So I guess brain chemistry doesn't affect behavior? Why does giving methadone to opioid dependent persons stop the behavior? Why does giving Naltrexone to alcoholics stop alcohol seeking behavior? Why do the best educated professionals in the medical and psychiatric  fields recognize addiction as a disease?
This is just like when a Christian can't understand why evolution is true and therefor rejects it. You are doing the same thing that the Christians do.
See, everyone has something they are not rational about!

Chris

I'd argue that they do. Many more people smoke that use crack, LSD, etc
How many people do you know who smoke versus smoking crack? The worst addiction I ever had to fight, psychological or otherwise, was cigarettes by far. I'm been off them for 11 years now, but I still get cravings from time to time.

Also, check out any drug and alcohol rehab clinic. You'll find chain smokers a plenty. People get clean of alcohol and drugs, but never seem to be able to kick smoking.

Getting off of opiates is a lot more difficult than getting off of cigarettes. People tend to not get off cigarettes because the problems they cause are not as immediate as the damage done by other drugs. When you loose everything you have, your spouse, kids, house, car... You can't put if off any longer, as to where cigarettes can always wait another day.
I quit smoking 3 times. first for 6 months, about 10 years ago for 1 year. and...
almost 3 weeks ago. I had a lot of urges today, but I got through them. Wish me luck...

Chris

Dependence and tolerance for alcohol should be much higher.

Chris

If you talk to the ones who've actually quit, that's what they say.

That's why I have a hard tine buying this alcoholism-is-a-disease thing. How many diseases can you cure yourself from just by changing your behavior? Now, if you want to say that there's an underlying condition that compels this--chemical depression, or some other kind of psychological or neurological condition--and that is what the disease is, I'm with you. But the drug abuse is a symptom, not the disease.

Addiction is a disease. All of your behavior is regulated by chemical and electrical reactions in the brain and when you subject the brain repeatedly with addicting chemicals it causes a characteristic loss of control. The craving drug users speak of is not the same as the normal "urges" people experience. It is a result of chemical changes in the brain.  Something that many people without experience in the areas don't seem to be aware of is the progression of the disease and the stickiness of the disease. By stickiness I mean that after a prolonged period of abstinence, when use resumes it immediately goes back to the level it was when the addict last used.  In other words, if you are drinking a fifth of vodka a day and then you are clean for 10 years, within a very short time of picking up you will be right back to the fifth a vodka a day. It may have taken YEARS to get to that point the first time and week 20 years later. One thing you can look up is called T.H.I.Q., which is an opiate like substance found in the brain of chronic alcoholics and IV heroin users. Also it's worth noting that the AMA and the APA both recognize addiction as a disease.
Addiction can be treated, but it can't be cured. Believe it or not, most users want to stop using but are unable to. They promise themselves over and over that they will stop their use and then go and use anyway.
Because addiction is a behavioral disease, it can be treated by removing the user from their drug of choice and that is what makes it so difficult for a lay person to understand. I think of it as your lizard brain is like a marketing department for your brain and gets you to do stuff that it likes like eating and sex and "fight or flight", breathing and so on. This marketing dept start marketing your addictive behavior to you morning noon and night as well as a physical sensation. When the brain isn't working right, people don't behave right. It's hard for people to accept this but it's true.
Chris

I remember candy cigarettes, too! I'm a living rebuttal of the claim that kids who ate candy cigarettes would grow up to be smoker.

Legal or not, I don't think anyone would allow their kids to buy this stuff today. The free market at work.  But when you think about it, what kind of sicko sells this shit to kids? Glorify smoking? Why not sell candy lung tumors? or maybe candy heart attacks?

Chris

Being someone who has had their lives destroyed by drugs (albeit legal ones) the problem is made many times worse by drug laws. I have the unfortunate circumstance of interacting with drug users on a near daily basis and I can tell you that prohibition is the cause of nearly every social ill around drugs.
1) People with drug arrests are unable to integrate back into society.
I've been very lucky with this. Despite having a legal drug problem, getting drugs that are only legal for some people creates huge price problems. Drugs that cost $30 for a precription of 90 cost 1 us dollar per milligram. A prescription of 90 perc 10s can be 30 or 40 dollars and be worth 900 on the street. Coming up with that money every single day hurts society and the people involved. Petty theft (boosting), stealing food, prostitution and associated diseases and for many users, needles (which through efficiency helps with the cost). All of this leads to arrests and when the user stops he finds he can't get a grant to go to school and nobody wants to hire him. He is stuck in a perpetual state of poverty and will often go right back to drugs because of how discouraged he is. It turns into a revolving door at the welfare, the prisons and drug treatment clinics.
2) Health problems and diseases
You show me a IV drug user and I'll show you someone with Hep-c, abscesses, problems with the heart valves... All of these problems associated not with drugs, but the cut and dirty needles both of which go back to the illegal nature of the drugs.
Then there are the people who are prescribed these drugs. They are lured into selling their pain meds by the huge amounts of easy money.
3) The corrupting power of drug money
Imagine you are a pain patient getting 90 oxy 80's prescribed per month and you figure you can get through the pain for 8 hours each day or play with the schedule or whatever because you know the every pill you sell is as much as $80 usd. You are looking at over 2 thousand dollars for maybe $100 worth of pills. Maybe you can't work because of the pain and you're broke and can really use a couple of thousand dollars a month and all you have to do is sell a few of your pills. Drug MONEY is very corrupting. I swear I knew 70 year old women who would sell a large number of their pills each month to make ends meet. This is just the illegal shit. Then there is the drug treatment people. In my area the gov will pay $75 per person per hour for "group therapy" with 1 counselor and 25 drug users (half of which are under the influence of drugs or sleeping) for 3 hours. The way they get the patients to cooperate is by holding their daily dose of methadone over their heads (I KNOW this for a fact because I have worked in a methadone clinic). There obviously needs to be gov insurance for non working drug users, but the system they have now is RIPE with abuse. There is also the idea that this "treatment" is cheaper then prison so they just put up with it. No private insurance would ever pay this money year after year for "patients" who never stop using drugs. I know of people (and it's a LARGE percentage, not isolated cases) who have been in this treatment modality for 10 years and still use as much drugs as they day they walked in. Prohibition makes this the norm.

I could go on and on and on. America will NEVER solve it's drug problem until prohibition is ended and sensible policies, especially education are implemented.
Much of this is actually the FDA's fault.  Many people assume that legal drugs are safe because they have the gov stamp of approval. A large number of speed users and opiate users started off on "safe" prescription drugs. Users assumed that the gov would protect them from unsafe drugs and that any prescription drug has been tested and is safe and non-addicting. I know I did. Now I know that FDA approval just means a drug company paid the government money.

Chris