Letters Page #965

Subject: Patients Can Do Something!!
From: Fed up in NY
Date: Apr. 14, 1999

Hello Fellow Patients,

Unfortunately, due to the stigma still attached to methadone, I am requesting that this letter be anonymous. I wish it wasn't that way, and it won't be for long, if the majority of methadone patients get off their butts and start working, going to school, or even volunteering. I have been on the "program" for six years.

In that time, I have gotten a great job as an administrator, (true, I have some skills because I worked prior to my active addiction and incarceration, but you have to start somewhere) and obtained a Bachelor's degree and am now working on a Master's. This is not a hurray for me. I was on the program before and got really comfortable collecting a check and sitting in front of the tv 20 hours a day. Let me tell you, though, that it won't make you happy. Unless you are sick, disabled, etc. there is no reason why you can't do something with your life.

So many times I go to the clinic, and see the same people trying to scam the system. They bring their addictive behaviors, like cheating and stealing, into the hospital with them, and the rest of us suffer by getting ALL take-outs banished, or some other new rule because of the lazy majority of patients. They walk down the halls of the hospital bumping into people, yelling and carrying on like they're still on the streets.

Gimme a break! For the majority of us, if it were not for methadone, treatment programs, and the staff, we would be dead or in jail. Start realizing it. Nobody owes you anything, least of all a living!! If more people on the program would get their act together and go to school, or take advantage of vocational training, they could get off welfare, SSI, etc., and begin to feel good about themselves. Get some of that self-esteem that most of us had so little of, we tried to numb ourselves by sticking needles in our arms. Most addicts that I know, are very intelligent. Let's use some of those smarts, and we can start holding our heads up high when we say that we are on methadone. When we get medicated, be polite and leave the program. Don't try to steal everything that is not bolted down on the way out the door. If you have to hang out at McDonald's trying to eat 10 Benadryl to catch a bigger buzz, then go there. Maybe you just don't want a life.

Please sign me....Fed up in New York.