Predicting Cocaine Use Among Methadone Patients: Analysis of Findings From a National Study
George H. Dunteman Ph.D.1,
Ward S. Condelli Ph.D.1, and
John A. Fairbank Ph.D.1
1 Research Triangle Institute in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
Center for Social Research and Policy Analysis, Research Triangle Institute, P.O. Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709
Findings from a large-scale national study of clients admitted to publicly funded drug treatment programs between 1979 and 1981 were used to determine whether cocaine use by current and former methadone patients could be predicted. The sample for this analysis comprised 526 daily or weekly heroin users admitted to 17 methadone maintenance programs. The study found that cocaine use by both current and former methadone patients showed an overall decline during the follow-up year; that patients who stopped using heroin after entering treatment were much more likely to quit using cocaine than were their heroin-using counterparts; and that the odds of initiating cocaine use after admission to a methadone program were much higher among patients who continued using heroin. These findings suggest that methadone programs may be able to reduce cocaine use among some patients by improving their effectiveness in reducing heroin use.
Note:
This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant 1-RO1 DA04847-O1A1, with Dr. Dunteman as the principal investigator. The authors express their appreciation to Anne Theisen for developing computer programs to analyze the data and to Michael L. Dennis, Robert L. Hubbard, and J. Valley Rachal for providing comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
