Under new rules, methadone clinics can offer more take-home doses. Will they?
Danielle Russell is, as she says, a “poster child” for methadone. For more than a decade, the medication — one of the most effective treatments for opioid addiction — has helped her move past the heroin she used to use. She finished a series of degrees, and is now a Ph.D. student in justice studies at Arizona State University.
As life-changing as methadone is, the catch is that taking the tightly regulated medication requires reporting to a special clinic nearly every day to get one’s dose. When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, that changed. In an effort to reduce contact among people at clinics, federal health officials said that providers could give up to 14 days of take-home doses to patients broadly, and up to 28 days to “stable” patients — patients, Russell thought, like her.
