It was a poor choice at best and a deadly choice at its worst. The switch the medical community made from prescribing Oxycontin to using methadone only added fuel to the fire of drug addiction.

Once it was discovered that Oxycontin had the ability to turn people into drug addicts, doctors started to hunt for something else to hand out instead to act as an effective painkiller. Their next drug of choice turned out to be methadone and, in hindsight, it might have been a worse choice than Oxycontin.

Methadone has crept in quietly and taken over one of the leading roles in today's drug addiction problem. The overdose statistics are frightening. Would you believe that they increased by a whopping figure of 500% between 1999 and 2005, and that was prior to doctors switching to prescribing it instead of Oxycontin? It seems likely that the numbers will have increased since then.

Using methadone as a short-term painkiller is one thing, particularly if is used to aid recovery from a serious injury or accident. Using methadone precisely as prescribed and only for the specified period of time, will most likely avoid addiction problems. Using methadone for the long haul is asking for trouble of the worst kind.

Generally speaking, methadone is normally handed out for severe pain, or at least it used to be. It seems that more and more it is also being favored for moderate pain. Ask the people who died using methadone if it was worth the risks. There are definitely other viable options the medical community could champion instead.

Methadone is noted to be an extremely addictive drug and it is, like smoking, very hard to stop. The withdrawal symptoms are tough both mentally and physically and most people in withdrawal need medical drug detox in addition to a full drug rehabilitation program in a treatment center. This is not a drug to mess around with.

This drug is so dangerous because it causes changes in breathing (slower respiratory rate) and changes in a person's heartbeat that a patient might not feel. The real kicker is that although the pain relief lasts for a few hours, the drug stays in the system longer. Adding more methadone to what is already in the body may cause problems such as coma and death. It also metabolizes slowly and pain relief does not come as fast as people expect, so they take more which compounds the problem.

If you or a loved one has faced serious consequences after taking methadone, or if a family member has died because of a methadone overdose, immediately contact an experienced attorney and discuss your options for filing a methadone lawsuit.