How good is Methadone for treating chronic pain?
Methadone is probably the best medication for chronic pain, which has no cure. It is stable, and allows the patient to function without significant loss if mental acuity seen with other pain medications. If you were on a 25 mcg/hr Fentanyl patch then the methadone dose would be around 2.5 to 5 mg per day. However, it does take about 3 days for the medication to reach complete steady state. I have taken over patients weighing 120lbs with methadone doses as high as 510 mg per day and they were able to work at their job full time. This being said, due to the long elimination time for the methadone, which makes it so stable for pain control; it is a difficult medication to stop, as the withdrawal period is longer than any other opiate. The average methadone patient will have at least 21 days of some amount of withdrawal symptoms. When trying to stop the medication it is decreased at 10% of the total daily dose once per month until at a low enough level to stop the medication. When I put a
