Introduction
Opioid Substitution Therapy has been a controversial topic. Somehow
it is easier for the addiction recovery industry to accept medications such as Disulfiram
with its aversive effect or acamprosate which does not carry the risk of
approximating the state of alcohol intoxication and because studies have suggested
that it is only effective in conjunction with psycho-social interventions. OST,
on the other hand, uses opioid agonists or partial agonists that act in similar
ways to the drugs of dependence, albeit without the same quality of high, and
this, some have suggested, shifts the addiction from opioid dependence to
another dependence and may be of more harm than good to the addict.