Am I the only one who has this problem

Den - Saw your post from Ukraine - Believe me, there is No reason to envy our methadone maintenance system in the states - As I posted a few months ago - I get the liquid - which comes out of a pump , and it totally sucks , my dose seems to fluctuate from day to day , and now that I get a weeks worth of take-homes , If the first bottle of the week is weak, then I find the entire 6 bottles will be the same , meaning I get to be semi - sick for a week until my next pick-up day. I have been in in-patient facilities and hospitals from time to time , and instead of getting the liquid have been given either the 40 mg bisquits or the 10 mg dolphine pills ( I am on 100 mg) and the difference is like night and day - the bisquits especially seem to be much stronger and consistent than the crap liquid I get at my out-patient clinic : and bottom line - the only way for me to get another form of methadone would be to change clinics - and to find one that does not use the liquid pumps - and they seem to be getting rarer and rarer - seems like all the clinics are switching to this liquid pump set-up. I swear I'm ready to move to Europe > preferebly Amsterdam

rclark231 wrote:

Den - Saw your post from Ukraine - Believe me, there is No reason to envy our methadone maintenance system in the states - As I posted a few months ago - I get the liquid - which comes out of a pump , and it totally sucks , my dose seems to fluctuate from day to day , and now that I get a weeks worth of take-homes , If the first bottle of the week is weak, then I find the entire 6 bottles will be the same , meaning I get to be semi - sick for a week until my next pick-up day.

Yeah well that sounds to me like they either set the calibration device too low for your dose or a nurse is stashing the amount she cheated clients at the end of her shift etc....The Other day someone I ride with came out to the car as I was finished and ask me what the calibration pump went up to in MG's. I said I thought it to be 100 mgs then she said I have been cheated then she said the nurse only put one squirt in each of her six bottles plus in her cup to be taken at the window. Well she went back in and confronted the nurse but there is no way to actually tell in her bottles cause they top the bottles off with water which if they would stop doing that it would make it harder for the nurses to mess up. Plus the bottles themselves should be marked in milligrams but they are the nurses and we are the drug addicts so go figure huh? Well anyway the nurse stuck to her guns that she had put two squirts in each of those bottles etc...Then the director got involved and made the nurse do a milligram check and yes there it was 720 millligrams off and it would have been off 665 miligrams off if the nurse set it on 95 to hit it twice for a 190 dosage. So the Director had the nurse make up 6 more take homes but told my friend that they coukd do nothing for the mix up at the window and if she only got 95 mgs instead of 190 at the window to take they can't fix that unless she would have refused to taking it and would have had them count it down at the window before she drank it etc...Just in case the nurse gave the right amount it would be too much to give her more. Since the nurses count was even more than just the mess up on my friends bottles that tells me someone else or elses went home shorted too. I WOULD THINK THAT TO BE A BIG NO NO FOR THE NURSE and maybe it was because she was a temp filling in for a week or two until they hired a new dosing nurse and we have not seen her there since this day. There is a new temp nurse there now. BUT FELLOW MMTer's IT DOES GO ON APPARENTLY and now I see why it should be so important to be allowed the choice of wafers. luckily we have WHITE METHADOSE, ORANGE WAFERS AND THE LIQUID. It happened to me one week I was so sick and I changed the next week to wafers a year ago.

Wow! That's crazy. The clinic that I attended had our doses already made up and sealed in their bottles when we dosed. The nurse would slide a small knife around the top of the bottle to open or bread the seal. The amount of water that she added was up to us. Some wanted more and some less but it was our choice.
Our bottles were not only sealed but the label had our number on it along with the mg and date and doctor's name as well.
Makes ya wonder how much training the nurses have to go through in order to work at the clinic doesn't it.
I hope not to many people suffered that day with the chance being they received the wrong dose for the day.
It's good that your friend did go back in when she did.

Old thread but we've had similar issues with specific nurses. Doses are handled by computer but that doesn't control for diluting the main bottles. Obviously the volume is what is measured, not the concentration and while there are cameras in every conceivable location there are none in the closed dosing room. When administration was confronted with the problem their response was to threaten detox for any patient who mentions the issue saying it was malicious rumor spreading. Common theme throughout these posts seems to be the old standby;"you're a junkie so you must be lying" The most troubling aspect is that in spite of the number of regulating agencies these situations must be investigated internally (or so I'm told) before bringing it to their attention. Nothing like an mmtp to make you feel powerless and this is admittedly one of the better ones.