Methadone and alcohol.

Abstract

We have demonstrated the dangers of alcoholism that complicate methadone treatment of heroin addiction. In future papers, we will attempt to identify contributory factors and suggest interventionist techniques. In the final analysis, however, rehabilitation programs, vocational programs, and, above all, alleviation of the dreadful socioeconomic deprivations related to, among other factors, the racial bias under which most of these people have been born and have suffered during their lives will, in the long run, prove the most satisfactory means of reducing the heroin problem, except for a minority whose psychologic problems will then provide the irreducible minimum from which the majority of the addicts will come. As has so often been stated, the great drug problem in this country is alcoholism. We know that legal prohibition does not prevent the rise of alcoholism, and we know to our sorrow that not only does it give rise to enormous wealth and power to criminals and criminal gangs but that some of them are now also profiting from the great wealth to be made by dealing in heroin.