Why Television Sucks

If any of you were bored, lonely, and/or pathetic enough to be sitting at home on a Friday evening and watching "20/20", specifically the "report" about methadone abuse, I have a few things to say to you.

First of all you probably should have called me or IMed me or something, and we could have played Scrabble online or something. That way we could have done something productive, with some basis in reality. Of course, compared to that "report"--a word which I put in quotes, and will continue to put in quotes, for good reason--anyway, compared to this "report", sharing stories of UFO abduction would have been more productive and had more basis in reality.

Secondly, to you who saw that piece of dreck, I would like to politely request that you put every memory of it out of your mind permanently. It was a triumph of biased inaccurate yellow journalism, of a caliber I wouldn't have been surprised to find on Fox News. In fact, you could have probably written this story just by taking a nice juicy alarmist Fox News piece and substituting "methadone" every time Fox had the word "terrorist". It was that irrational, absolutely hell-bent on scaring the viewers. There is nothing even remotely correct in their talk about the "heroin-like euphoria" of methadone; calling it "the 'one-pill-can-kill' painkiller"--with never a mention of its LEGITIMATE uses, without a word about the thousands of lives it's SAVED.

Yeah, I'm really glad my mom was home tonight so she could watch that garbage and soak it in. She's been ambivalent about methadone since day one, having heard all the myths and misconceptions: that it's a "life sentence"; that methadone treatment involves "replacing one addiction with another"; that methadone gets you high. Nevermind that it's the only thing that kept me from getting high for at least the first year of my six clean years; nevermind that it's the only reason I could stop doing heroin this time. Nevermind that it's the only thing that's allowed me to rebuild my life: to hold a job, to buy a house, to pay my bills. Were it not for methadone, I think there's a very good chance that I'd be living on the streets, if I was living at all. My mother is glad that I've changed my life, but she never misses an opportunity to tell me how happy she'll be once I'm off methadone for good, never misses a chance to remind me how much I'm paying every week for my treatment. I've spent the last eight years of my life trying to explain to her that methadone is a blessing, not a curse; so it's really excellent that John Stossel can come into her living room and undo all the work I've done to help her understand, all the effort I've put into educating her about the benefits of methadone maintenance.

And I'm really, REALLY glad that my employers had the chance to see that "report", as well. I'm sure that will guarantee me a good reception when I answer their new round of questions and tell them exactly WHAT this prescription is that's causing these unwanted side-effects. I'm sure they'll understand the difference between methadone that's prescribed as painkillers--often by the same incompetents who were handing out OxyContin a few years back like they were Skittles--and supervised methadone maintenance treatment, where I'm drug-tested monthly and where my dosage is monitored and dispensed in a form which would be very difficult to divert and impossible to get "high" from. I'm sure that subtle distinction will register completely with them. Boy oh boy, am I glad John Stossel was there to give them the cold, hard facts.

Stossel and company need to stick with what they're best at: puff pieces about Brad Pitt--and confine their "investigative reporters" to what THEY'RE best at: exposing the scandals on "American Idol". I remember back when "20/20" used to have some integrity; Hugh Downs is probably rolling in his grave.

(While looking for the link to the methadone piece, I also came across this, which would make me want to claw my brain out through my eye sockets, if I didn't already want to. I almost went to journalism school; now I'm glad I didn't. And we wonder why the American public is so misinformed and full of prejudice.)