Methadone Patients are the Best Patients (In Community Pharmacy)

Most people don’t believe me when I say this.

However, in my experience, it was true.

Not in a ‘romanticised NHS frontlines’ kind of way. Not because they bring chocolates at Christmas. But because, in over a decade working in community pharmacy, the most loyal, honest, and surprisingly insightful people I ever interacted with… were the methadone patients.

Granted, it has been 8 years since I last worked as a patient facing community pharmacist. But I have some absolutely incredible stories from my time in community. Stories that you just wouldn't believe. All 100% true.

We would often joke that we could write a sitcom called 'Pharmacy Street' just re-telling true stories that actually happened. Some of the funniest stories you will ever hear.

So not long after I left community pharmacy, I wrote a lot of these stories down because I knew one day I would want to share them. The majority of them based around our methadone patients. The best patients.

At the centre of all of these stories were real people.

When you work in community pharmacy, you see the same people every day. Day in. Day out. That repetition does something. It strips away the small talk. It builds familiarity and eventually, it builds trust.

Once that trust is there, something shifts.

They stop being “the methadone script” and start becoming Steve, or Keith, or Vinny.

They start sharing stories, some tragic, some hilarious, some completely surreal.

If you listen (I mean really listen), what you hear is raw humanity:

→ Humour despite chaos

→ Loyalty despite trauma

→ Gratitude despite how the system has treated them

I have had methadone patients consistently show me respect, all because I spoke to them like human beings rather than problems to manage.

Of course, the stigma still exists. You see it in the way some staff sigh when patients walk in with a new, blue prescription. You hear them say how they don't want to take on any methadone patients in the pharmacy. You even see it at the corporate level, where these patients are seen as profit generators rather than people with stories, struggles, and names (each blue prescription was worth £20 to the pharmacy and lasted 2 weeks).

That stigma is part of the reason I wrote my latest, soon to be published, book:

Methadone Patients: Breaking the Stigma with Unbelievably True Stories

If we want to change how addiction is treated, we need to change how addiction is perceived.

This isn’t about glorifying drug use. It is about acknowledging that the people showing up every day for treatment are doing something right.They’re showing up. That alone is often more than the healthcare system gives them credit for.

They are not junkies.

They are not scroungers.

They are not stereotypes.

They are the people who taught me patience, compassion and how to laugh through absolute madness.

Methadone patients were some of my best, certainly most memorable, patients.

If you have worked with them long enough, I bet you already know exactly what I mean.