New medicine offers drug treatment choice

BANGOR – A new medicine that helps drug addicts control their cravings is being offered to patients at Acadia Hospital’s drug treatment clinic in Bangor.

Addiction experts say buprenorphine is relatively safe and difficult to abuse, which means it can be prescribed by a patient’s local physician. That could allow for the expansion of drug treatment to rural sections of Maine that lack access to a methadone clinic.

“It’s a much safer medication,” said Scott Farnum, administrator of substance abuse services at Acadia Hospital. “It’s much harder to overdose on by itself. Methadone is a drug that is easy to overdose on. We’re planning to be utilizing it in a very comprehensive way in the next few months.”

Methadone, which curbs an addict’s symptoms of withdrawal from heroin or painkillers, is dispensed only at clinics regulated by the government. By contrast, buprenorphine can be obtained at pharmacies.

Treatment professionals caution that the new medicine is much more expensive than methadone and is less effective in treating people with long-term, severe addiction.