Methadone maintenance is a corrective treatment for the high social toll of opiate use; but it doesn’t really treat opiate addiction. It “treats” the legal, medical and interpersonal negative consequences that result from a dependency to heroin and other opiates. But the price paid by the “patient” is that they must gamble on chaining themselves to a slowly developing addiction-dragon that may be harder to get away from than the original chaos and potential death they sought to escape from in active heroin addiction.