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The Nightmare Of Methadone Withdrawal Insomnia

Sunday, March 18th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

Life is a process that human beings experience. This experience is a combination of events and interactions with other individuals that can be defined in a variety of ways. Some of the labels that are attached to the various experiences include the experiences being defined as good, routine or bad.

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In order to cope with the “bad” experiences there are two basic courses of action that an individual can take. Those courses of action are either to fight or take fight. Fighting an experience could include addressing the situation by keeping the “bad” experience in perspective, seeking help, or maintaining a positive perspective on the situation. Choosing to take flight could include internalizing the situation or seeking a method that provides escape. One such method of escape can be the choice of utilizing pain relieving drugs.

An illicit drug that an individual can turn to in order to deaden the pain, escape the situation, or just to simply cope with life is heroin. Heroin is a highly effective opiate and painkiller that will serve this purpose. Unfortunately, in addition to being illegal, heroin is highly addictive.

For those individuals who wish to be free of heroin there is a treatment program that utilizes a synthetic opiate. This synthetic opiate is called methadone. In order to understand the methadone process of heroin treatment it is important to understand what methadone is, the related side effects and specifically the condition of methadone withdrawal insomnia.

What Is Methadone?

Methadone is a synthetically created opiate that has been sanctioned by governments to medically treat the heroin and morphine addict. The medical use of methadone provides the same feelings of euphoria and release from pain that is gained from the use of heroin or morphine.

The treatment strategy behind the substitution of methadone for heroin and morphine addictions serves two purposes. The first purpose is to minimize or prevent the illegal purchase of heroin. The second purpose is to provide the addict with the needed opiate, but control and release the addict from dependency through the controlled use of the substance.

Methadone Withdrawal Side Effects

As the dosage and frequency of the use of methadone occurs there are various side affects that are experienced by the addict. Some of those side effects include symptoms that are characteristic of having the flu. They include pain in the body, fever, sneezing, mucous flowing from the nose, etc.

One critical side effect of the withdrawal process is sleeplessness or methadone withdrawal insomnia. Methadone withdrawal insomnia occurs because, through the use of an opiate, there is an effect on rapid eye movement sleep. This REM process is that period of a person’s sleep in which dreaming occurs and when a person is taking an opiate, such as methadone, the REM process decreases which minimizes the dream process.

Methadone withdrawal insomnia takes place as the recovering addict begins to have fewer opiates in their system. With less opiates in the system, the dream process begins to normalize. Methadone withdrawal insomnia then becomes a reality as the patient’s dreams are often nightmarish or too realistic in their portrayal. This in turn causes the condition known as methadone withdrawal insomnia.

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