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The cure for oxycodone addiction can be deadly

By Anne Geggis
Staff writer, The Gainesville Sun

What 26-year-old Ashley Gunn of Gainesville has called a lifesaver over the past five years also has killed nearly than twice as many area residents as oxycodone, the drug at the center of Florida's prescription drug epidemic.

In the deadliest year out of the last five — 2008 — local statistics show that methadone killed area residents at a rate nearly on par with the national murder rate, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But Gunn, a waitress and the mother of three children, credits the daily dose of methadone she has been administered for the past year at Meridian Behavioral Healthcare Services with recovering her car, her job and her relationship with her husband.

These were all parts of her life that her addiction to the powerful painkiller oxycodone nearly stole from her.

"When I first heard about it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, the methadone clinic?' — I thought of this horrible place," she said. "But when I went there, it totally changed my mind — it's a big help and blessing in a lot of ways."

Eight years since opening the opioid treatment program at its campus on Southwest 13th Street, Meridian Healthcare is about to open its second such program in Lake City – part of the biggest expansion of methadone distribution in Florida over the last 20 years.

Meridian says it keeps a tight rein on the methadone it dispenses to its patients to treat oxycodone addiction. And studies have shown that methadone deaths are rarely traced to treatment programs, said Sara Mihlfeld, director of Meridian's opioid treatment program.

"Pain doctors can write (prescriptions) for it as well, and they do," she said. "The source of it (methadone overdoses) we just don't know.

"We just know they are getting it from somewhere," she added.

For more of this article, go to http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120120/ARTICLES/120129950/1109/spor...