Methadone Withdrawal Symptoms

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is John Bosworth. I'm a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in St. Pete, Florida. I'd like to talk a little bit about methadone withdrawal symptoms. Like any addiction to any drug, methadone can be, can be viewed by some as a disease that attacks the central nervous system. I don't like to look at the disease model, but it's definitely a concept that describes what happens when somebody's addicted to, to any type of drug. What happens when the, the person doesn't get the drug and in especially with methadone and other pain relievers is that the, the brain and the opioid receptors in the brain kind of scream for the, for the drug and when it's not there, the body produces all kinds of symptoms in the body that are very unpleasant. People talk about withdrawal symptoms. Now most of the withdrawal symptoms in methadone can be pretty severe so what we want to do is if anybody, or you know anybody that's addicted to, to methadone or trying to wean themselves off; first line of business is to make sure they do it under, you know, the supervision of a medical professional. And the reason for that is some of the symptoms and the withdrawal symptoms can be really, really severe. In my private practice, what I hear most is there's a lot of gastro-intestinal distress; a lot of rebound pains. Some people who didn't even have pain, but just use directionally, start to feel that their joints and their bones, they, they also have muscle, muscle spasms and gastro-intestinal and stomach spasms. And there's also a lot of insomnia, restlessness, irritability. The three main that I really see in my practice those abdominal distress, rebound pain and a lot of significant amount of anxiety and agitation associated with, you know, withdrawing or trying to get off, actually methadone or any other opioids. These are some of the methadone withdrawal symptoms and my name is John Bosworth and I'm a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in St. Petersburg, Florida."