BETHEL, Maine — Jessica Thurston, the driver of a car that crashed last summer in Oxford and led to the death of her 8-year-old son, said her reliance on a methadone maintenance program did not cause the accident, but being tired probably did.
Thurston contacted the Sun Journal on Tuesday, the day a story was published in the newspaper reporting that her extended family was supporting a change in Maine law to make it illegal for anyone using methadone to drive a motor vehicle. Maine law already prohibits people on methadone from driving large commercial vehicles.
The Sun Journal had attempted to interview Thurston for that story, but she said she never received four messages left for her. She agreed to talk to the Sun Journal, but would not agree to have her photograph taken.
During the interview, Thurston glanced at the mantle across the room where the remains of her second-youngest child, Matty, are kept in a simple, carved wooden box with his teddy bear on top and a picture of the grinning, tow-haired boy to the left. A diamond cross on a pearl and emerald necklace that was sent to her by someone she never met hangs from the picture.
Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I ask God, why?” she said of the guilt and pain she feels every day because she lived through the crash, but her son did not. He died Oct. 24, 2011, from his injuries.
Thurston was driving on Route 26 near Welchville village at around 11:30 a.m. Aug. 12 with Matty strapped into a seat belt in the back, when her car crashed into a utility pole. The car went several hundred feet off the side of the road and was airborne three times before it split a tree and burst into flames near the intersection with Route 121.
She told police and a witness at the accident scene that she fell asleep.
In February, the Oxford County District Attorney’s Office announced it would not bring charges against her because there was “insufficient evidence of criminal activity.”
Thurston is adamant that despite being on methadone treatment, she and others who take the medication as prescribed and do not drink or do other drugs at the same time can safely drive.
Her statement is backed up by Guy Cousins, director of the state’s Office of Substance Abuse Services, who told the Sun Journal that methadone, in its proper dosage and absent of any abuse of other non-opiate medication, has no effect on driver response.
Thurston said there is a “fog” period when the methadone treatment begins and that patients may not be able to drive safely at that time. She said she did not drive herself when she began the program.
Letters from doctors who saw her the day before and after the accident attested that she appeared “alert and orientated” after her daily dose.
She said she was tired but not to the point that she felt she shouldn’t drive.
For the past four years, Thurston said she has gotten up at 3 a.m. and is out the door by 4 a.m. She is driven with others to Westbrook where she receives her methadone dose. She is home by 7:30 a.m. each day, except Sunday when she is allowed to take the dosage at home.
The week before the accident, Thurston said she was dealing with removing an infestation of lice and some unexpected family issues, in addition to the driving schedule.
“When you do a schedule like that, it’s hard. After a while it catches up with you,” Thurston said. “I just was tired.”
She was heading to the Auburn Mall to take Matty to Jokers and then on to Lewiston where they were going to have Chinese food. But as she drove down Route 26 on Aug. 11, she said she recalled feeling a little tired and saying to her son that it was time to get some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.
“I remember hearing him call, ‘Mom,’” she said.
She said she didn’t understand why the car wouldn’t stop and believes she may have had her foot on the gas pedal instead of the brake.
She broke four ribs and was recuperating at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston two days after the accident when she received word that Matty, who had been taken to the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital in Portland, was going to have surgery to reduce brain swelling.
“I pushed myself. I pushed myself,” she said of her effort to get out of her hospital bed to get to her son.
She spent the next two and a half months staying at or near the hospital, oftentimes by herself, so she could sit with her son and help care for him until he passed away in her arms.
Thurston said she would never have gotten behind the wheel, especially with her child, if she felt she was impaired in any way from the dose she had taken about four hours before the accident or for any other reason.
The 28-year-old mother said she began the daily methadone treatment in October 2007 to wean herself from prescribed and non-prescribed painkillers and prescribed anxiety pills that she had taken occasionally since she was a young teenager.
To see more from the Sun Journal visit sunjournal.com.
If it’s not okay for someone to drive a commercial vehicle while on Methadone, it shouldn’t be okay to drive ANY vehicle while on Methadone.
right??
Exactly! My father was hit head on by a woman who had just come from a methadone treatment. She and the two passengers were uninjured, but my father ended up with 8 steel plates and 22 screws to put him back together.
Methadone takes at least 2-3 hours to peak in the bloodstream, so if she was “just coming from a clinic”, it wasn’t the effects of the methadone that did it. some people are just crappy drivers.
Well, the woman admitted to being “a little out of it from her treatment” so perhaps it had been long enough. Either way, I still believe that one who has had a recent treatment should be considered impaired to an extent. People on higher doses of less potent narcotics are instructed not to drive, after all.
and therein lies the confusion
Conversely, if it’s OK to drive a car, and the state director of Substance Abuse Services says there is no effect, it should be ok to operate a commercial vehicle?I actually agree with you, but why just toss out a statement and see where it sticks? Let’s review the scientific literature.
This is what the National Highway Transportation says:
http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/job185drugs/methadone.htm
For the readers benefit I extrapolated the “meat & potatoes”from the study as it relates to driving.
Effects on Driving: The drug manufacturer
cautions that methadone may impair the mental and/or physical abilities
required for the performance of potentially hazardous tasks, and that
the sedative effects of the drug may be enhanced by concurrent use of
other CNS depressants, including alcohol. In healthy, non-methadone
using volunteers, single doses of methadone will impair driving ability.
Numerous European studies of long-term methadone maintenance patients
have shown that appropriately administered methadone does not cause
significant psychomotor or cognitive impairment when administered regularly
and when the subject abstains from all other drugs. However, in the
majority of cases, patients did not exhibit stable abstinence from drug
use and had an increased occurrence of simultaneous psychiatric/neurotic
disorders or personality disturbances which, by themselves, could be
a reason to doubt their driving ability. In Germany, the Joint Advisory
Council for Traffic Medicine at the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building
and Housing and the Federal Ministry for Health issued the following
recommendation: Heroin addicts treated with methadone are generally
not fit to drive; however, these patients may be considered fit to drive
if they show a period of methadone substitution for more than a
year; stable psychosocial integration; no evidence of the consumption
of additional psychotropic substances; evidence of a subject’s
readiness to feel responsible for himself/herself; therapy compliance;
and no evidence of serious personality defects.
Interesting read from the NH State Police Forensic Toxicologist Consultant Laurel Farrell
(in power point, review page 41 on specifically although a really good historical perspective on the drug is in the beginning)
http://www.wsp.wa.gov/breathtest/docs/webdms/DRE_Forms/InService08/Methadone%20and%20Driving.pdf
The issue with methadone specifically is that it is big business, a multi -billion dollar industry that brings with it opinions that are myriad in nature. Much stigma is involved, some warranted, some not. In the treatment of opiod dependence, it is most likely the most effective tool out there if proper case management is in place which includes regular contact with a credentialed, licensed mental health professional, (not someone who got tired of being a Wal-Mart greeter and decided this was a better job because you could sit down), a comprehensive service plan in place that is individualized in nature, that is to say every person is different and should be treated accordingly. Some folks have chronic pain issues and most likely never be able to live a life without some type of chronic pain management, some are your garden variety dope fiends that need to become abstinent and get on with their life, a cookie cutter approach to treatment methodology is not at all therapeutic, nor is it ethical. If Methadone is passed out like food samples at a warehouse buying store, any positive effects that could be garnered are lost, and the results are a treadmill operation that reaps huge monetary gain for the owners of the clinic. When “medical” operations such as methadone clinics are driven by profit, the effect is often greed driven, minimal client care. I am usually not in favor of government intrusion, however I believe this is one area that if the state/feds took over the dispensing of this medication, the profit motive would be removed and perhaps some people would prosper more so than under the present system.
Such a tragedy. I’m sure this woman is devastated. I feel deep sadness for her.
Yes indeed
Regardless of the methadone issue, I’d like to point out that both versions of this story state that Matty was “strapped into a seat belt”, which makes me think he wasn’t in an approved child car seat. If he had been, there is a good chance he might be alive today. Parents need to realize how absolutely necessary child safety seats are. They are worth any money and hassle that may go along with them because they save kids’ lives.
Just FYI, Maine’s law requires children ages 7 & under
who weigh less than 80 pounds to be secured in a child restraint system.
Children who weigh less than 40 pounds must be secured in a child safety seat.
Having seen this vehicle it is highly unlikely that a booster seat would have
made any difference. That said, you are 100% correct that these seats do save
lives and decrease injuries; they should be used whenever appropriate. For more
info and to learn how properly to secure a child, visit http://www.safekids.org . Peace be upon this family.
The laws have changed with the car seats. Now its recommended up to age two or too big for rear facing they remain rear facing. Child under 8 has to be in a restraint seat but over 40 pounds can be belted with the seat belt and not a harness. A child over 8 and 80 pounds can be in a belt by its self IF and ONLY if the belt properly lays across the thighs and the child’s knees are bent over the edge of the seat. Thus means a child’s legs can not be strait out.
However this is not a case about properly restraints. This a case about falling asleep at the wheel and dire consequences that happened because of this. This mother has to live with the fact that she alone killed her precious child. She spent over two months by his side helping and praying. Then to have him die in her arms. I think this is the worst punishment that any mother could ever have happen. I know from experience. There is nothing worse then having them have life in your arms and sit there and watch, feel and hear as that life is taken away. She lives every day with what has happened.
Before I leave. I have a question.. Would you all be bashing her if she has not been on the methadone program? Or had it not been published that she was. Would this then be the case of if you were tired you should have stayed home? I think most if not all of us have atleast once in our lives driven when we really should have just stayed home. :-)
RIP little man
Unfortunately I think many would still be bashing this woman. As I’m sure you’re quite aware the level of ignorance on here can be quite high at times.
We didn’t bash her as hard as she bashed her son. Tough pahotties if you didn’t “approve” of the comments.
As for me, I think most reasonable people have the right take on this “methadone” thing. If you are on narcotics NO DRIVING…. UNLESS you can find a Doctor who will state to the B.M.V. that driving for his methadone patient is perfectly safe.
“And the Band Plays On”
One hallmark symptom of drug abuse is denial.
“I can quit anytime I choose.”
“I drive just fine.”
“I’m a great parent.”
Heard it all…. Never believed any of it.
What is the difference between medication administration and drug abuse?
Get it in a private physicians office with a personal prescription, and pay for it with your own money or with insurance… It’s a medication. Go to a free clinic pick up your dose weekly at taxpayers expense, because YOU chose to abuse drugs in the first place it is abuse three fold. Abuse of yourself. Abuse of the drugs, and abuse of the taxpaying citizens which must support this nonsense.
I have NO IDEA why you are arguing on this board. As I understand it, you are on Methadone for a totally different reason than the subject of this story. If your doctor prescribed it, and you are using it at your own expense… I have NO problem with you.
There is no argueing and I’m a substance abuse counselor
and I personally know many stable methadone patients whose doctors do not try to restrict their pateients license status, simply becuase they ARE stable and are NOT impaired.
Much agreed.
No, if methadone hadn’t have been mentioned, and lets say, her Lipitor…would not have been an issue.
Without knowing first-hand the full accident and injury details one can only speculate….based on experience I will share my own speculative thoughts…..in reading the description of the damage caused, how far the vehicle traveled off-road, rolling multiple times, going thru a telephone pole & a tree, going “airborne” and catching on fire, I would conclude (speculate) that anything other than instant death was a miracle…..the reports state the young boy was “conscious” at the scene but not speaking…..he was taken to the hospital where he struggled for two months before losing the battle from complications related to injury…..IMHO, the seat belt did exactly what they are intended to do….
Hello: Use of Methadone makes you tired!!! Narcotic. It also makes one old weak, and a damn poor parent.
Newspapers should print FACTS, not just what fits in to their P.C. nitch
I don’t know if it makes you tired, not all of them seem to be, you see how some of the people in Bangor drive when they are leaving or heading to a Meth Clinic? They drive as fast as they can, and nearly clip people off with last second turns, pretty much letting some drugged up person use a vehicle as a dangerous weapon.
WTH are you talking about? Are you out watching the methadone clinic traffic? As much as I am against the clinics, because I feel that many of them support, instead of wean, methadone use, perhaps people are just trying to fit in their trip amongst many of the other parts of their busy lives, just as you and I. Not everyone on methadone is a raving maniac rushing to get their daily fix. I personally know of a few people who have made the comment that they’d rather be on the drug they were originally addicted to than be on methadone because it makes them feel like **** and that they don’t feel they’re being weaned at all. The problem is that she’s been ‘weaned’ since 2007. Seriously? 5 years? The problem lays with the fact that these clinics are for-profit and will lose subsidy if they lose patients. So keep them on methadone, prolong their addiction, but keep making money in the process.
Many have been on it for 10 years or more. There are many, hundreds of 28-30 year olds that have been on methadone for 10 years. The reason they don’t “wean”, and as an RN I am sure you know this, is because not all people they feel are “wean worthy”. Some clients, after meeting with the shrink, are labled addicts for life. They are told that addiction in a life long disease. The clinic has absolutely zero interest in weaning many users off anything, ever, given any circumstance. That is sad. What is more sad is the fact that you and I are paying for it. Worse than that is that accidents do happen after clients dose but HIPPA laws do not allow the PD to post that as a cause in many cases without 100% certainty. The scariest part of it all is that it is a huge growing business. We are just at the beginning. I would bet anything the +/-3k users in Bangor will be twice that in 3 years. Our landscape is chaging for the worse at a rapid pace. My advice, protect yourself.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I will still stand by my ‘for profit’ stance. BECAUSE I know that there has been a history of meds being passed to patients with no observation, leaving patients to cheek or pocket their unswallowed med. I know that one has been able to stand at the window and watch the patients leave, and thenbe seen meeting people right in the parking lot of Acadia Hospital and blatantly sell their pills. THAT is the fault of the clinic, because I guess if one is a ‘addict for life’ they should be supervised with their medication administraton. If clinicians truly think someone is a lifetime addict, I would believe they would be making more of an effort to be sure the medication was going where it needed to go-to the patient and not the junkie on the streetcorner.
Agreed.
Then you have the guy who is in the paper today after being confronted about regurgitating his methadone to sell to someone else! These clinics are USELESS!
Not so.
and this guy is in a minority…………….what about people that get prescribed mood altering meds by their MD and hand them off or sell them to others?……………..guess that’s OK as there isn’t any drool involved
Please inform me where in my post I said it was ok for anyone to sell or give away drugs prescribed to them. I DIDN’T! STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH! I was pointing out another article that was posted today about methadone and people abusing it.
It’s called “Diversion” regardless of the medication is spit out of someone’s mouth or handed over from a pill bottle. The pill bottle is a little less messy
You still didn’t point out where I said is was OK to either sell or hand out prescriptions to other people, because I didn’t so stop.
its’ still ALL “diversion” of medications
Those types of shinanigins, give all the other responsible, non drug using patients a bad name; granted.
and what type of pills is Acadia giving to patients? Do yiou mean methadone? It’s a liquid form. The pills are precrbied by doctors only for pain in a private setting, not a clinic.
RNinMaine, you can’t educate people that don’t want to be educated. Just watch the movie Mississippi Burning and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Don’t waste your breath repeating yourself.
I’ll have to check it out, thanks.
LOL yeah that’s it I am out watching the Meth Clinic traffic, hired by your tax dollars that pay me to do such, give me a firckin break. Sometimes when I drive I have to drive by these “places” and watch fools dive in and out like vultures going to their last meal They have such a priority that they have to risk killing themselves and others by being on cloud 40 somewhere in their cloudy brains to get in as fast as they can. They don’t have to go to a meth clinic during their daily lives, instead they can spend some time learning how to deal without it period like they did before they started. This woman “weaned” since 2007 says a lot about how these clinics operate, of course they are in for profit, the Gov’t isn’t doing a good job in actually seeing if these programs really work now are they? I know people who have quit several other habits that don’t take 5 years. The clinics are just around to baby these people, give them their hits and let them operate machinery. Isn’t it funny how some OTC and Prescribed meds that are for harmless coughs or infections tell you to not operate machinery once you take them but we will give people ” a program” to “wean” them off a drug they should not have used and allow them to operate heavy machinery?
You have your opinion and I respect your right to state it, however none of it is backed up by any solid research or verified facts, only emotions.
Observations, not emotions
and where do you do your survalence?
You didn’t see my comment above about tax dollars pay me to do this “surveillance”
Heck, I see people driving like that into lots of businesses–like McDonald’s even. Again, it’s stereotyping that people that drive fast into Acadia are methadone recipients jonesing for a fix. And what do you mean ‘learn to deal without it like they did before’? That makes no sense, because before methadone they were addicted to something else… And a drug they should not have used? Like the Percocet they were prescribed for a broken bone? Something doesn’t add up with what you’re trying to say.
You can’t blame someone’s addiction on the doctor prescribing percoset or vidocin. Unless he tells you to crush it up and snort it several times a day for the rest of your life.
The fact is that the longer a person takes opiates, the more tolerance is built up. That’s how many people end up snorting and injecting after the oral adminstriation just doesn’t work anymore.
Denial is not a river. The Nile is. You of course would find someone and one of many who have seen how some of these people and their treatments behave and operate and form an opposite of opinion of what you think and automatically disagree with it. Before they were addicted to something else, they didn’t need that something else, and shouldn’t need anything else and let out in public to operate vehicles. Sure I see people drive like this in other businesses too, so who is to say your observations are or are not the same people I had been observing only at different locations? Didn’t think patients were banned from driving to other places of business. I am not saying everyone who drives like this is assumed to be a meth patient, but certainly the majority act like they are on some form of drug or treatment that should not allow them behind the wheel of a car.
There are methamphedamine patients in Maine?
You’re refering to the old “detox mentality”, that all an addict has to do is detox and they should “cured”. Emptying out the drugs from your body does not immediately correct the damage done to the nuerotransmitter system in the brain that is opiate based.
This is what drives the very real physical cravings to use drugs, along with a behavioral component that has become hard wired into the brain.
Although I agree with your sentiment, I would disagree with the statement “the Gov’t isn’t doing a good job in actually seeing if these programs really work now are they?” If you actually review the literature on substance abuse treatment, you will note that Methadone is the most studied treatment methodology out there. They know what is going on, they subsidize it, and it is a huge income for the drug industry, who make large campaign contributions.
I won’t argue your points and though agree with your statements, anybody can feel that Methadone is a studied treatment and feel it is a method out there to treat people while despite the study others will disagree
A weekly self pay rate for methadone tx in Maine is $95.00. The MaineCare reinbursement rate is now $60. a week. Not much profit for the for- profits when most of your patients are on MaineCare, and you have to pay for nursing time, counselor time, urine tests, and everything else that” Bundled “rate covers for one week. The for- profits are losing money,.
Nonprofits like Acadia, that are connected to a hospital are able to survive because they are just that..nonprofit. And state subsidies ONLY go to nonprofit clinics;, no money goes to the for profit clincis from the state coffers.
There are methamphedamine clinics in Bangor?
I did specifically call out one and identify it as in Bangor, the examples of Bangor were used as an observation of my driving routes, if I felt one existed in Bangor, that is one of the legal and not underground nature, I would call it out
There are methamphedamine clincis in Maine?
That is not a true statement. Drugs have different effects on different people. I know two people who take it for chronic pain. It has non of those effects on them. Actually they take it because it has less side effects then other drugs they have been on.
Quite true and backed up by sceinfitc research, not hysteria.
Please tell me where it says one drug has the exact same effect on everyone.
and I think similar incorrect and uninformed things were said before they hung a few people in Salem MA somtime ago……………………..
The people they hung in Salem were not using a substance that addicted them, caused them to steal from family friends and strangers, and they were not “beholding” to taxpayers for their daily fix.
I have no problem with you taking your rightful place at the back of the line. Just don’t use my dime to do it!
The people they hung in Salem were victims of hysteria and prejudice.; same here.
They weren’t stealing taxpayer funds.
Then……………. I guess people unfortunate enough to have a with mental illness that take psychotropic medications and are on Maine Care must also be be stealing taxpayer funds.
Addicted people need to grow up and deal with the addiction. They always blame the problem on something else.
This is about an accident where a child died. Addiction did not cause it
Whether directly or indirectly, addiction caused this accident. I have sympathy for this young lady as she lost her precious son. However, to not at least acknowledge that addiction to opiate based drugs did not play any role in this tragedy is trivializing the massive problem that many our young people face today.
and if anyone has been on ANY type medication of any kind time period, they would have stabilized on it.
If this women had been on blood pressure meds or other medications, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
It wouldn’t have enve gotten into the papers
I’m not a hater here. As I’ve said, I have compassion for this woman. My previous comment was to point out that if she had never been addicted in the first place, there probably would not have been an accident. I’m not saying the methadone caused this accident. Maybe she was tired. Getting up very early to have to get the methadone because of a previous addiction could have contributed to this. So my point is, addiction can be a life altering peril. A SAD one indeed. One that affects far too many people in this day and age.
do not disagree with your analogy.
sounds like she lives a hectic busy life; having to drive daily to get your medication dispensed sure does eat up alot of time from a busy person’s day, esp if they have a job and family.
so I guess if you think it’s inderectly about addiction due to the stritc daily dosing laws of a clinic, I guess you’re right.
Imagine if people had to drive daily to their doctor’s office to have their meds dispensed to them……………..
yep….you’re from Orono.
“I didn’t crash because I was drunk, i crashed because I was tired, distracted, and had trouble seeing straight.”
We feel sad for you.
Why’s that? I’m doing pretty good!
were you describing yourself crashing?
I was trying to be clever but it has apparently gone over someone’s head.
clever?
NO ONE knows what this women has to live with for the rest of her life!! I would probably be taking a lot more than methadone if this happened to me!!! Just a tragic event all the way around!!
It would be nice if the state wasn’t making so much money one methadone and would help these folks get off that addiction as well. It seems that one shouldn’t have to take it for ten years! As long as there is money to be made…………..the state/pharm companies etc will continue to support the abuse of this drug also.
And how is the state making moneny off methadone?
This tragedy is about as awful a thing as can ever happen to a parent & family. The blood tests indicate that it wasn’t drug related. I’ll bet it would surprise some just how many arm chair quarterbacks making comments are drug dependent on perfectly legal drugs for various age related difficulties and if they were not using they would have their licenses denied to them. I have pulled many people from wrecks who have had insulin shock or heart problems and blacked out as a side affect so be careful what you condemn as fact when it could be you who are in the same situation. This tragedy should never have happened but it did. Same is true of countless others. I hope this woman can recover from the guilt she carries from this accident..
It’s all part of the prejudice and stigma that surrounds people who are prescribed methadone.
Methadone needs to stop being given out and people need to go through withdrawals in order to become clean.
I am sorry she lost her son.
We must not minimize the loss of this womans’ child.
What does going” through withdrawals to come clean” really mean in the long run?
People who take methadone fall asleep a lot, and if you have a slight intolerance to it you are especially prone to falling asleep or being fatigued. This is an influence that is different than alcohol.
myth
Most of the people I have known to take methadone eventually ended up sleeping a lot, but then again a lot of people I knew of who took percocet and oxycontin slept a lot as well.
There were
5500 methadone related deaths in 2007. Methadone represented less than 5% of
prescribed opiates but was attributed to 1/3 of all opiate related deaths.
http://www.stopmethadonedeaths.com
And most of the time there was a cocktail micture of other drugs besides methadone. And where there WAS methadone involved, it was usually methadose pills used for pain management, not liquid from a clinic for substanc abuse treatment.
I have a relative who takes methadone daily…He is a shell of his former self. He was more with it when he was abusing pills. He falls asleep at all hours of the day. The “fog” period has now lasted almost 2 years. Im very sorry for her loss but the explaination doesnt pass the smell test.
Just as I said above. Some people would rather be addicted to their former drug of choice than be on methadone because of how it makes them feel. People are, in turn, addicts to the medication that is supposed to be helping them but in some cases make them feel worse.
Not being high, causes people to see the world as it really is, and it’s often one Unpleasant Beast to have to deal with without anything to self medicate with.
Sure being straight is often no “fun’ and people get anxious and depressed. Those things need to be treated and dealt with too.
You hit it right on.
No one is minimizing your distress. If taken as prescrbied, without any other active substance abuse or medical issues, nobody should be sleeping all day on their Rx of methadone.
Sometimes there is more to a situation than any of us can know unless we are with people 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
I take methadone to treat a neurological disorder. I have no problems with sleepiness while driving. If I did NOT take methadone, the effects of my neurological disorder would keep me up half the night. Then I’d be exhausted, and not a safe driver. I need the medication if I’m to keep working.
The side effects are surely dose-dependent.
Take the bus to work. NO ONE on narcotics should be driving. If someday someone finds that booze is good for some malady, do you think that the State will remove the laws regarding alcohol use and driving.
I’m sorry you have a condition which prevents you from operating a motor vehicle at full capacity. I guess if you were blind you would have to find another way to get to work?
My job is highly technical and requires alertness and the ability to maintain vigilance over the course of an 8 to 10 hour day. My performance reviews are uniformly excellent. My primary care physician and neurologist agree that it is safe for me to drive.
As I noted in my earlier message, the side effects are surely dose-dependent. In addition, one website states (in regard to people with far higher doses than mine):
“People tend to experience drowsiness most severely during the first weeks of methadone maintenance treatment, and most people will develop a tolerance to the sedating effects of methadone a few weeks after dose stabilization. Sedation can be a sign of an overly high dosage.”
Preaching to the choir!!
Everything you’ve written is backed up by solid scientific research.
You are comparing apples and oranges here. Sure, when patients start a new medication, regardless of whether or not it’s a narcotic, they are warned it could cause drowsiness untill the patient’s body adjusts to the daily dosage.This is not something that pertains only to narcotics.
As for Booze…………I don’t think Booze will ever have any medicinal value to be prescribed by any doctor anytime soon.
There’s the apples and the oranges you’re comparing.
and I’m really not sure where the Blind Analogy comes to play here??
Take the BUS? In MAINE? There are practically none! The ones they do have don’t take you where you need to be and stop running before you are done doing whatever you were doing. Sorry, takin the bus in Maine is not an option.
Right On LisDavies!!!!
Anyone on narcotics of any kind, should not be driving. Even if you have been on the same dose for some time, different factors & stressors can make you react differently at times- for instance, lack of sleep, a stressful day, a bad cold- then on top of that take Methadone or any other narc, & it will affect you differently than if you take it on a usual day when all is well. Narcs in your system? Don’t drive.
This isn’t the first time she killed someone in a car accident because she “fell asleep” at the wheel. And if you get up at 3:30 every morning go to bed by 8. People work overnight shifts and stuff like that all the time. They sleep accordingly. Her excuses are pathetic and I can’t stand seeing the “sob story” of how she is so upset. She ripped away the life of a beautiful boy. He was my daughter’s “boyfriend.” They were 8 so I use the term “boyfriend” loosely, but either way, they were friends and I met him once last summer. He was such a wonderful child and she killed him. If you can’t tell when you’re too tired to get behind the wheel, you shouldn’t be driving at all. Falling asleep at the wheel doesn’t make it okay. Why are there no charges either way? Some sort of involuntary manslaughter or something.
I have read about other accidents she was in but nothing about any other deaths, am I missing something here?