Prevalence of Alcoholism Among Methadone Patients

Abstract

A recent prevalence-of-alcoholism study carried out at a New York City hospital-based methadone maintenance program provided data concerning the number of patients addicted to ethanol and an opportunity to test different intervention strategies for polydrug users. There has been, over the past decade, increasing interest in the phenomenon of polydrug use/abuse among methadone maintained patients. Alcoholism has become especially prevalent and given rise to a number of studies attempting to determine both the number with and etiology of this disorder. Current theories range from the use of alcohol to supplement methadone (suggesting that this practice begins after entry in a methadone program) to alcoholism preceding methadone treatment (suggesting that the patient was alcoholic prior to program participation.) The estimated prevalence of alcoholism has ranged from less than 1% to greater than 70% among this patient population.