Methadone and other drugs
Although methadone doesn’t react with or affect most other prescribed drugs, always check with a pharmacist if you get a prescription for something else or are buying over-the-counter medicines.

If you go to the dentist or a doctor other than your prescribing doctor for treatment, tell them you are prescribed methadone.

This is especially important if you need treatment for:

• pain;
• epilepsy;
• TB;
• depression;
• HIV; and
• anxiety or poor sleep.

If you take buprenorphine (Temgesic/Subutex) while on methadone, you may go straight into withdrawals because it is a different type of opiate and it will expel methadone from the opiate receptors.

You will also go straight into withdrawals if you take the drug naltrexone - which is sometimes prescribed to help people stay off opiates.

Methadone blocks the receptors in your brain that heroin and other opiates have to fit into in order to have an effect. So, if you have any methadone in your system, heroin may have a reduced effect or none at all. If you try to take enough to get a hit, you run the risk of overdosing.

Taking any sedatives in conjunction with methadone can be dangerous as they make each other more effective and increase the risk of overdose. Particularly risky are the tranquillisers like diazepam (Valium) and temazepam which, as well as being an overdose risk, stop people thinking clearly and so increase the chances of sharing used injecting equipment or paraphernalia.

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