I first came to LAAM treatment about one-and-a-half years ago through a research study that was being conducted in Los Angeles where I live. The only reason I agreed to begin LAAM maintenance treatment was because it was free; otherwise I don't think I ever would have agreed to it. What little I had heard about LAAM did not sound too appealing: I kept hearing that you got a "less loaded" feeling, and that it took much longer to detoxify from than methadone. Less loaded? You only dose three times a week? You go a whole weekend without anything?!
     Switching from heroin to methadone is psychologically hard enough as it is (fixing every few hours to dosing only once a day leaves you with 23 hours to kill!), but only three doses a week? I didn't think it was possible. For this reason, my personal opinion is that anyone considering LAAM treatment should start out on methadone and then switch over to LAAM after you feel you've adjusted to the one-dose-a-day methadone schedule.
     I'm so successful in my recovery now that I don't know what I'd do if I had to go to the clinic on a daily basis . The narcotic blockade effect LAAM produces has given me the strength and the time to face situations in which I normally would have run and gotten loaded. I'ts like being on a long lasting methadone and naltrexone at the same time.

     I've heard some people complain about side-effects from LAAM, the most common being nausea and/or dizziness upon standing up. I've never experienced this problem, but I did have other side-effects when I was on LAAM and drinking alcohol regularly. I would get bad abdominal pains and sharp throbbing at the ends of my fingers. After some Saturday nights of excessive boozing, I would even wake up with a mild feeling of withdrawal, like I was slightly dope-sick. That all ended as soon as I stopped drinking. All I get now are mild pre-sleep twitches and a little constipation. Otherwise I'm healthy, happy, sane, enjoying a good sex life, but most importantly, I'm able to do things I couldn't do while on heroin- like have a life.

     Because clients are medicated only three times a week, LAAM can be especially useful to those individuals who can not or will not give clean urine samples for their monthly random tests, which I find to be the majority of patients. Many people can also benefit from not having to go for the medication every 24 hours. Those patients who do not qualify for methadone take-homes because of continued "dirty urines" but who wish to reduce the frequency of their clinic visits can switch to LAAM and perhaps function better than they otherwise would as a result of not having to visit their clinic every day.
     For some of us, the only contact with the drug world that we have occurs when we visit our clinics. For others, it might mean a 21-day detox every so often to reduce our tolerance. For those of us who have decided that we've had enough of it all, the fewer times we have to enter the drug world and the fewer times we have to be reminded of "the life," the better.

     Unfortunately, right now LAAM is still not available to the majority of the population. In all of Los Angeles County, there is only one clinic that offers it so patients have to come from surrounding counties just to get treatment. Hopefully, more clinics will offer LAAM to their patients in the near future. Maybe LAAM will even be approved by the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) for take-homes and we'll only have to visit our clinics a few times a month. That would really be something, wouldn't it?