SPOILERS
Oh, Ellery. Henry is certainly right that he doesn't want to look weak-minded and that's all mixed up with his desire to please Colson and also Wes who, truth be told, are both worried about his addictive tendencies. I'm woefuly ignorant about drugs - I understand that methadone wouldn't give you the extreme "high" of morphine, but isn't it also addictive?
I'm glad Henry is there. He understands the situation and it has to be helpful to Edna to have some support while they wait for the Colson and Wes battalion to arrive. And what's this? Another young doctor in town .... Thanks, Louise!
those young whippersnappers are popping up everywhere! Yes, methadone is addictive as well, however its "reward threshold" is not as steep as morphine or heroin and that means that you don't go up as quickly and you don't go down as fast either - the loading of the drug and its half life are much longer, which makes it much safer. For those addicted (and that means physically dependent upon, not emotionally tied to) morphine or heroin, the typical therapeutic approach is to replace the current dose of morphine by mixing it in parts and increasing the methadone while decreasing the morphine gradually in three stages until pain relief is steady, then gradually withdraw over 7 to 14 days by decreasing the dosage. Cold turkey is a serious shock to the body and can produce convulsions and severe flu-like symptoms as well as emotional misery, physical pain, debilitating headaches... I was never addicted to morphine but I have been to prednisone, and even following a doctor's withdrawal plan for it, staving off the withdrawal took literally months. And I still had headaches - pounding, relentless headaches, and pain from head to toe. There's no 'reward' sensation in the brain for steroids, either, I was taking them for asthma. Withdrawal from morphine produces headaches, body aches, diarrhea, vomiting, emotional distress, insomnia... it goes on and on.
