Maintenance therapy

 

Maintenance therapy is used for lifestyle stabilisation and harm reduction and can be the best option for long term addicts or those using high doses.

 

In theory, the patient should be stabilised on a maintenance program, using methadone or buprenorphine as substitute therapy before beginning a controlled withdrawal program.

 

However, criticism has been made against the “parking of patients” on maintenance dosing in the UK, after 1 in 3 users of substitutes were found to have been taking them for over 4 years, with 1 in 20 for more than 10 years.

 

Maintenance prescribing may not completely stop the use of heroin and reduces the incentive to quit by acting as a “cushion”, and some claim that methadone is harder to detox from than heroin.