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Recovery in the News
A long road to recovery: Cambridge man comes clean about his addiction
David Gordon
Cambridge Chronicle
May 31, 2007
Cambridge - While it was not initially his desire to share his painful story of addiction and subsequent recovery with the public, Kevin McNamara ultimately felt he had no choice.
"Methadone has such a bad rap," said McNamara. "People see all the methadone people that are on other drugs, but they don’t see the methadone people that are just on methadone, and that’s because we blend in with everybody else … We hide it ourselves from our families and our jobs, and our friends because … when it [methadone] first came out, we were scared to [take it]."
The middle-aged, unassuming Cambridge resident decided he had to step up and participate in the short documentary-style film, "Waking Up: A Story in Four Parts," which was produced by The North Charles Institute for the Addiction, the methadone clinic he has been attending for 12 years now, after it became clear that none of his fellow patients were willing to join the project.
Highlighting four different North Charles success stories, the film attempts to dispel the negative images of methadone treatment and to raise the public’s understanding of this treatment.
Methadone treatment plans mitigate the symptoms of opiate addictions, such as heroin and Vicodin, by acting as a much weaker replacement narcotic. Because methadone is addictive, it is frequently referred to as “liquid handcuffs.” Unlike the far stronger opiates, however, patients taking just methadone generally do not feel or exhibit such negative characteristics and are more likely to maintain a steady lifestyle.
"The methadone works just like keeping you from going into withdrawal. But you don’t develop a need for an increased dose over time … because it just keeps you level, and you don’t get high from it," said McNamara. "You’re just at an even keel and you don’t even have any signs that you’re on any kind of medications, so I consider it just like the rest of the stuff I take."
While the predominant assumption is that methadone is only used to help heroin addiction, it has been effective at treating all kinds of opiate-based substance abuse. Though McNamara had been abusing alcohol, marijuana, speed and other drugs for his entire adult life, it wasn’t until he was legally prescribed pain medication for a broken leg that his life took a very noticeable change for the worse. According to McNamara, he spent several years “doctor shopping,” or hopping from doctor to doctor to maintain his pill habit.
"I got the doctor and he was like, ‘Of course, I’ll give you all the Percocet you need. Look at your leg.’ And I never went to his office; I met him outside the hospital."
At its worst, he said he was taking as many as 30 pills of Percocets a day.
"I was afraid I was going to die."
Though he had been in and out of rehabilitation programs, none had worked and he recognized that he needed serious help. For McNamara, methadone was the answer.
"After a couple of months of being in the clinic, I knew these weren’t any scary monsters. And that this was a good treatment," he said.
Like many addicts, however, it took McNamara a few years to truly get clean. After a long and successful two years on the treatment, he decided he could phase out the methadone completely. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before he went back to using Percocet pills and quickly overdosed, when his body couldn’t handle the high doses he was previously accustomed to.
Immediately, he went back on the methadone treatment, and immediately gave up pain medications. He says he’ll be taking methadone for the rest of his life.
McNamara laughed, "I’ll be 70 years old on my cane, taking my methadone."
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