(click on this text to go to the original article)...methadone, is accepted as the closest thing to a heroin cure. About 115,000 Americans take methadone regularly. Yet by various estimates, only 5 percent to 20 percent of such users stay on it for more than 10 years. Some find they no longer want the medication. Others relapse into drug use. Many are put off by the cumbersome, often petty bureaucracy that administers methadone; misleading rumors that methadone is ruinous to health; and an insidious social stigma that by equating methadone with illicit drugs, forces users to hide the achievement of ...