Opioid users claim province’s switch from methadone to Methadose resulted in withdrawal symptoms
An ambulance drives through downtown Vancouver as the local health unit started prescribing a 'safe supply' of opioid alternatives in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, on April 7, 2020.Laura Shaver had abstained from using illicit opioids for about seven years when British Columbia replaced its supply of methadone with a new version called Methadose.
“It felt like death,” Ms. Shaver, 42, said in an interview."I felt like I had no power. I didn’t know whose body I was in, whose mind was thinking. It had been so long since I felt any withdrawal symptoms that it was so scary. To me, withdrawal means death. I would rather be dead than go through withdrawal, in all seriousness.”
Users who spoke to The Globe and Mail said the old formula typically staved off withdrawal symptoms for 24 hours, and sometimes more. With Methadose, many reported withdrawal symptoms in 12 to 16 hours. It accuses the province and college of digging “their heads into the ground and [refusing] to acknowledge or consider the risks of Methadose, even as the tragic evidence of those risks mounted around them.”last November that Terry Lake, the B.C. health minister who oversaw the switch, said he had heard within months that some people were not doing well, and sought a briefing and review from the ministry, which included advice from the College of Pharmacists of B.C.
“They knew within months of this forced change that it wasn’t working, that it was causing instant problems,” Mr. Gratl said. “There were catastrophic consequences of overdose and death, [and] an unbelievably extreme overdose epidemic with thousands of people dying.”
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