I was on methadone for some years, and later was prescribed it by the doctor. It's pretty sad that I had to spend years going to the clinic for under treated pain, and I wasn't the only one. There was a guy there with advanced cerebral palsy that had to be brought in a lift-equipped van every day to come get a dose. I saw businessmen in suits, I saw skanks, and thugs, and working people, and pregnant women, and even little kids running around in there. There was even a bucket of toys in the corner for them to play with.

I had a counselor, that I had to meet with twice a month. Over time, staff turnover replaced several of my counselors and I often had a new one every six months. I was upfront with all of them, that I didn't do heroin, that I had painful health issues, and that I was there as a chronic pain patient. A lot of the counselors, they were all female, would tell me 'shh don't say that, you aren't allowed to be a client here for that' and I would be like 'ok'. I passed years of urine tests, and at one point had a really nice counselor who I actually got along with well, who was even kind of attractive. But then one day she called me back into her office and told me that my last urine test came up positive for MDMA and benzos. At the time, I hated benzo's and had only ever taken one valium in my whole life years before, and had certainly never tried MDMA.

She was pretty disappointed in me. The results were then sent off for a re-test, I then lost all my take homes and the clinic was 40 miles away, so paying that extra gas money was nice as I drove myself to and fro daily, even on Sundays. Not to mention that some months prior I lost my license due to cops patrolling around the methadone clinic and catching me with expired insurance. Every day during that time that I drove illegally, I had to park at least a half-mile from the clinic so I could walk and not be seen by the police, who considered the traffic coming and going to and from the clinic as a veritable fountain of arrests to fill their crumbling jail and empty coffers. FInally I received my results, a false positive on both counts. The reason it took so long was that my counselor found another job and so my results were sort of lost in the shuffle.