Challenges of addiction treatment with opioid agonist drugs from the perspective of stakeholders: A qualitative study

Drug use disorder and dependency is one of the most challenging problems in the world. One of the most common therapy for opioid use disorder is agonist maintenance therapy especially methadone maintenance treatment and buprenorphine maintenance treatment. The study aimed to investigate the challenges of providing agonist therapy from the perspective of stakeholders.

The present study is a qualitative study with a content analysis method that has used exploratory and semi-structured interviews and purposeful sampling. Interviews were conducted individually to collect data from the view of stakeholders; including some of the physicians as service providers and a group of patients as service recipients. Sampling reached saturation with 21 people. The data were analyzed based on the Graneheim and Lundman model.

Data analysis revealed eight important challenges and barriers, including travel and time spent, availability of agonist drugs (used in maintenance therapy) illegally, take-home dose ( home dose of methadone), trust and confidentiality of authorities, the cost of treatment and income and expenditure, policy and cultural issues of the centers, file filing process, and family factors.

The current pattern and the process of treatment with the agonist drugs reasonably have been well received. If the obstacles and problems of this treatment method are not considered, its useful results can face challenges.