Methadone helps man toward drug-free future

Methadone restored Carl Amacher’s future.

And for the 31-year-old Navy veteran, that future is looking very good. He’s finishing a four-year degree from the biology department at the University of Maine, and expects to take a professional position in North Carolina, near his family, after he graduates.

But three years ago when he was a freshman, the Connecticut native says he was “a good-time party guy” with “an addictive personality.”

After serving a four-year hitch in the U.S. Navy, he was serious about his education – but also enjoyed a boisterous social life.

To pay his tuition and other expenses, Amacher waited tables evenings at a popular area restaurant. An efficient and personable server, he earned great tips, leaving work every night with a pocketful of cash and a rowdy group of party-hearty co-workers.

“I was earning good money,” he recalled ruefully during a recent interview. “But after a while, I was spending every single dime on drugs.”

Heroin, cocaine, LSD and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax – sometimes called “xandy bars” by abusers – were his drugs of choice, until he got turned on to the powerful and addictive prescription pain reliever OxyContin.

“Oxys are the big thing around here,” he said. But they’re expensive. At $65 for a 40-milligram tablet, Amacher was soon spending $70 a day or more on his growing habit.

He lost interest in his lifelong passions for basketball, camping, fishing and other activities. His school performance suffered. His friends still called him “Good-time Carl,” he recalled, shaking his head at the irony of it. “But I spent my whole day focused around ‘How am I going to get high?’ I couldn’t just be happy anymore.

“When you use drugs, you lose your ability to have fun doing normal stuff,” he explained. “You get this great feeling of euphoria and well-being, but then you start feeling really, really crabby.”

He started working extra hours at the restaurant, volunteering for extra tables, to make more money to buy more drugs. “But I was still coming home broke. I never had any food, I couldn’t pay my bills – I really hit financial rock bottom. After a while, I just wanted to go back to the way things used to be.”

Amacher wanted to stop using OxyContin and other drugs, but recognized that he was too far into his habit to quit cold turkey. When he heard that Acadia Hospital in Bangor was planning to open an outpatient methadone clinic to treat opiate addicts, he knew it was the way to go.

He was waiting when the clinic opened its doors in June 2001 and became the 93rd client admitted. He was started on a low dose of methadone, 40 milligrams a day, to stave off his physical cravings for other narcotics and the symptoms of withdrawal.

The initial plan was that he would slowly taper the methadone dose over a few months until he was clean and able to function without any drug at all in his system.

It didn’t work – for a variety of reasons, the transition toward abstinence proved too difficult. Amacher left the program after a few months and resumed his drug abuse. But in February 2002, he came back to the clinic – “and luckily, they readmitted me,” he said.

This time the plan was different. Amacher started taking 60 milligrams a day, and instead of the dose coming down over time, it went up – and up – in response to his persistent cravings and his temptation to start using street drugs again.

Amacher’s dose got as high as 130 milligrams and stayed there for almost a year.

He’s started tapering down slowly now, and through counseling and hard work has earned take-home privileges for a week at a time. He hopes that, in time, he can get off methadone altogether and lead a normal life, not tethered to Acadia or any other methadone clinic.

Amacher admits the drug makes him “a little sleepy sometimes,” but insists there’s no euphoria, no “high” – only a sense of being in charge of his future and an awareness that he’s “thinking more intelligent thoughts” these days.

He also notices a rebuilding of his natural emotional highs and lows and finds himself able to enjoy simple pleasures like watching sports on television and being in the out-of-doors.

Although many of his friends and family members still don’t know about his addiction, Amacher is willing to risk the stigma of going public with his story so that other drug users may seek the treatment they need.

“It’s important to get the information out,” he said. “People need to know they can get back to enjoying the things that used to give them pleasure.”