01:830:364 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Buprenorphine, Methadone, Enkephalin
Document Summary
Heroin addicts experience overwhelming pain, intense feelings of dysphoria, negative. Opiate withdrawal agony and dopamine mood, and physical distress. The need for the drug is all-consuming, often provoking dangerous and desperate actions, to obtain opiates or the money to purchase it. Dependence/withdrawal symptoms are particularly intense during the first 48-72 hours of a period of abstinence and begin to subside after 96 hours (4 days). For the opiate addict, the attempt at hedonism ends in failure. Methadone, taken orally, is a low potency, long-acting, synthetic opiate agonist used (drug replacement therapy) to suppress withdrawal and stabilize recovering opiate addicts. Opiate addiction also varies with the route of administration. Abuse liability of opiates from highest to lowest: More recently, synthetic organic chemists have modified the chemical structure of opiates to dramatically increase their potency via the oral route of administration. Semi-synthetic opiates are rapidly absorbed through the stomach and resistant to metabolism by liver enzymes.
