60-80 Mg Daily Of Methadone Not Showing Up On Drug Tests

I got a letter from my pain management doctor yesterday saying he was dropping me as a patient because I had NO metabolites in my system for for it on urine screenings going all the way back to November. I know this cannot possibly be right. I can get away with taking 60 mg daily, but not less than that. Is there anything that would cause a person not to have it show up at all?

REPLY

REPORT

Another thing, somewhere around there, I switched from taking the drug test via urine to taking it via mouth swabs that soak up the saliva and turn blue when it has enough. The office staff claimed they only had the swabs for "2-3 months", but I'm tested every month and I know I've used the swab at LEAST 5 times. I also heard someone who had the same thing happen to them was taking cranberry extract supplements for urinary tract health. I went back Tuesday and they tested me again, this time via urine and I made sure I was taking it EXACTLY as prescribed. I am prescribed 20 mg 4 times a day, but I've told the doctor a good amount of the time I can get away with only 3 doses a day. But leading up to this I made sure to take it every 6 hours (4 times a day). I also didn't take the generic pepto bismol pills and anti-diarrheal pills that I normally take before an appointment. Here's hoping it was the swabs. Otherwise I have no friggin clue.

REPLY

Was this helpful? 0

Re: Jason (# 1)

See this is my argument with mandatory urine or saliva drug testing. The military alone spends BILLIONS of dollars on them. The outcomes are the same for all tested. A false positive or negative can kill a career. I'm a Nurse, and we were all taught to believe that the pharmacy and the labs are faultless. It's always the nurse that gets blamed if there is an incident with a drug reaction or tests. Seriously, this myth has gone on to this day. There are so many factors that must be controlled to get an accurate test. There are hundreds of metabolic processes and genetically induced cross processes alone. Add multiple medications to that and there is a huge variation in metabolism, efficacy, tolerance, and addiction. It's obviously different from person to person.

Now a person that is a so-called pain specialist (there is no standardization on this yet), any doc can say they are a specialist in this simply because of the little training in medical school. But drug screening for chronic pain patients is a waste of money, manpower, it loses trust between MD and Patient. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that urine drug testing of chronic pain patients offers no benefit and is a form of control. See, the overdose drug epidemic is so hard to get control of that they feel they must do something so they latch onto chronic pain patients and throw all these controls upon them. Picking the 30 day supply of meds and physically showing up month after month. It's a prison in your own town. Oh, not a day early or nonsense like that. If a person is in pain and is a drug addict it's best to treat as a drug addict with pain and give them an appropriate amount. No, but the unfathomable decision is to take them off pain medicines no matter what. and also people perceived as drug addicts get much inferior care primarily because things that an average person would get the right treatment for is not offered to the perceived drug addict. Most people that are drug addicts haven't come to terms with it and have not hit bottom far enough to decide to go to rehab. Drug testing isn't going to accelerate that realization, no, it's going to cause anger and defensiveness. You can't make a drug addict stop if they can't or don't want to. The logical thing to do is the "do no harm" method while keeping them pain free. A pain-free addict is much less likely going to hunt for street heroin and needles and spread disease.

I explained all this to my primary MD. but her ignorance and prejudice against these people usurps any logic and education. Health care providers drug abuse education in the USA is dismal. The prejudices are palpable. In fact it's the one major epidemic diseases that many refuse to treat or deal with. I'm worried if I get some sort of trauma and have to be admitted to a hospital that my MD no doubt would not prescribe any pain meds. She probably would take me off cold turkey on the small amount I have to take now. No, to her pain is a much better thing than for her to be put out by prescribing a medicine that has no negative effect in the short term in acute trauma versus her boogyman of addiction. Now they make everyone sign their rights away to get basic pain services. The contracts say, "we'll treat you with an alternative if we think you need to not take narcotics." These contracts are obviously written by nonclinical attorneys because the person has already tried all non-narcotic drugs prior to, as last resort, take narcotics which are the most effective. I'm early retired as an advanced practice nurse. I've worked in all critical care areas over the last 30 years. What is happening now around pain is the most barbaric unbridled regressive backward thinking I've ever seen in medicine.

A person isn't going to go into drug rehab if they get a positive test and the MD cuts them off. To me that is the highest immoral crime to cut a chronic pain med patient off without given any alternatives for care. You are damn right people are suiciding, which gets reported as OD's. If not that, they will try to get it any way they can.. at this point legal or non-legal. It's stupidity that's taken over this panic of opiate drug OD's. The statistics on the OD's are highly flawed. I'll just let you in on one obvious one. First it's rare that a chronic pain patient gets addicted. It's rare that in truth they overdose. (no its the son's girlfriend that checks out the mother's medicine cabinet) or any other scenario like that and takes a hand full of massively potent to the pain med virgin that OD's. That's reality. However, there is a phenomenal number of suicides that get reported as just OD's. Think about it. Grandma in chronic pain becomes more depressed after her husband dies and she's alone and the pain is unrelenting. She can't ask her doctor to change it or go up on the dose for fear of being labeled and cut off of the drug. So there is tremendous fear. It's usually men, elderly alone in chronic pain or with a life restricting illness that commit suicide the most. But how many coroners are going to do all the extra paperwork for that and crush the grieving family even more by reporting it as a suicide. No, it's reported as a simple overdose and we've got a huge epidemic on our hands. I'm not saying there isn't a problem but the approach to solve it is immoral and asinine.

REPLY

Was this helpful? 0

I am on methadone maintenence and my doctor wants me to start taking lipofen.Will this drug prevent my methadone from be...

2 REPLIES

I have been on Methadone for 8 years! My first few months in the methadone clinic a came up "dirty" due to being...

3 REPLIES

My regular doctor left the clinic I have been at since 2010. New doctor at same clinic wants to wean me off my daily 280...

6 REPLIES

I would like to know if norcos and methadone both show up as barbiturates or opiates basically in the same category in a...

11 REPLIES

I had been on 130 mg of methadone and nothing else for several yrs for neuropathic pain, and it helped so much! Anyway o...

12 REPLIES

I took a 5 panel urine test and the doctor was making sure I was taking my meds! I take methadone for pain and I found o...

1 REPLY

I'm on oxycontin 80's and I've been on them for 8 yrs. I am required to take a test every 6 mos. I've ne...

9 REPLIES

I've been on oxycodone 15mg and oxycodone 40mg long acting for over ten years. My pm Doctor drug tested my urine and...

7 REPLIES

Why is metabolic methadone showing up in drug screen and I don't take ## Can you privide any other details? Do you m...

7 REPLIES

I am a 42year old male my first drug was at 15 years old it was hash/ever since I was 5years old I suffered from very se...

5 REPLIES