While there is much debate generally over treatment schedules and duration, patients can often obtain indefinite treatment at their methadone clinic—lasting as long as the patient requires it. Many factors determine the treatment schedule, including specific clinic policies which sometimes require patients to taper regardless of their desire to do so.

In general, methadone maintenance is seen as ongoing symptom management rather than a curative treatment. This has buttressed the arguments of those who view methadone as just another prescription drug taken for a long-term, chronic condition.

The most common and traditional dosing regimens, however, tend to fall far short of providing optimum or even sufficient results for a number of patients. This is due to the ceilings many clinics place on dose levels. Until recently a 100-mg/d dose was regarded as a ‘glass ceiling,’ rarely to be penetrated.

In practice much lower thresholds were maintained even though the optimal dose varies greatly between patients, often quite higher than this and with no inherent threshold in the possible dose, as the toxic dose for patients with very high tolerance can exceed this ten-fold or more.

The blood concentrations of patients on an equivalent dose (when adjusted for body weight) can vary as much as 17-fold, or up to 41-fold when influenced by other medications, leading to a vast range of potentially required doses.

Methadone has traditionally been provided to people who are opiate dependent in a highly regulated methadone clinic, generally associated with an outpatient department of a hospital, though this varies country by country. For example in Australia, Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) is delivered by private pharmacies for a nominal fee to the client (regardless of the fact it is free as it is subsidized by the Federal government). But it is much better to detox from methadone and become drug free.

This nominal fee covers the costs of providing the service, such as purchase and maintenance of supplies and equipment like dosing cups and precision measuring devices, supply costs involved in transporting a highly regulated drug from supplier to the pharmacy, extensive record-keeping as per government requirements, and compensation to the pharmacy staff for the time involved in preparing for and dosing a client (none of which are funded by the Federal government).

We strongly recommend to everyone reading this article to use methadone only with doctor’s prescription and under medical control, however, if you or someone close to you have problems with methadone addiction, we suggest you to visit Drug rehabilitation .