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Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a source for this "common knowledge"? I've seen plenty of people on methadone do just fine with benzos, especially if they take prescribed doses. I'm not so sure this isn't some bullshit pushed by doctors without evidence so that they have an excuse to stop treating their patients and leave them without benzos in a state where they are forced to either go to the black market or potentially withdraw and die. I've seen a lot of this from doctors as regards to methadone patients, trying to take people who have been on benzos for years or decades off without proper tapering and without a proper reason. It's almost as if they think of methadone patients as less than human, creatures whose lives are not of value. Wait, not almost. Whatever happened to the hippocratic oath?

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I mean I cannot link you to a direct source, it was just something everyone knew, ya know 'common knowledge'. This was on both coasts as well as the midwest.

And it was explained to me at 3 different clinics in 3 different areas of the country that it was really about #1) liability -- particularly at clinics that accepted insurance for payment but not exclusively, there were cash-only ones with the same rule: No Benzos full-stop. If you had a legit prescription for xanax or ativan then they would send a letter to the prescribing doctor and would not dose you until they got an affirmative, positive response -- and to a somewhat lesser extent #2) they know it has the real potential to be fatal, and they're not monsters they don't want to kill all the junkies. Despite what you might think, some of them actually do give a shit and got into substance abuse medicine trying to help. Sure, for some it's just a job, and if you own the clinic it's a gold-shitting goose, but there are a lot of them who are genuinely trying to do good.

Taking patients off benzos without properly tapering them off can lead to death. Some clinics are putting their own liability worries ahead of patients' well-being and risking patients lives in the process. It's not every place, but the places that do this clearly do not have the patients' best interests in mind. It's hard not to think that it's because they are dealing with addicts that they even consider such actions. The way addicts are treated at some clinics is simply unbelievable. They are lied to, disrespected, and ignored. That's bad enough but putting their lives in danger based on something that's allegedly common knowledge but hasn't even been studied is beyond preposterous. However as you say, they are raking in the dough so what do they care. It's not everywhere, but it's like that at a lot of clinics.

I don't have any sources, but I've lost two people close to me who mixed xanax and methadone. They were in rehab, fell off the wagon and that was it. Blood tests showed just those two drugs in their systems.

> It's almost as if they think of methadone patients as less than human, creatures whose lives are not of value.

This is 100% what one friend who's going through methadone treatment says. They don't even want to get them off of methadone either. He had to fight to even begin going down, and he was on it at 2 years at this point. He'll be in "rehab" for 5 years early next year, and the dose is about 1/3 what it was when he started.

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