Certain opioid medications like synthetic heroin and additional recently buprenorphine square measure wide won’t to treat addiction and dependence on different opioids like diacetylmorphine, anodyne or oxycodone. synthetic heroin and buprenorphine square measure maintenance therapies supposed to cut back cravings for opiates, thereby reducing unlawful drug use, and therefore the risks related to it, like unwellness, arrest, captivity, and death, in line with the philosophy of hurt reduction. each medication could also be used as maintenance medications (taken for associate degree indefinite amount of time), or used as detoxification aids. All obtainable studies collected within the 2005 Australian National analysis of Pharmacotherapies for Opioid Dependence counsel that maintenance treatment is preferred, with terribly high rates (79–100%) of relapse among 3 months of detoxification from LAAM, buprenorphine, and synthetic heroin. in line with the National Institute on misuse (NIDA), patients stabilised on adequate, sustained doses of synthetic heroin or buprenorphine will keep their jobs, avoid crime andviolence, and cut back their exposure to HIV and viral hepatitis by stopping or reducing injection drug use and drug-related high risk sexual behavior. narcotic antagonist could be a long opioid antagonist with few aspect effects, and its always prescribed in patient medical conditions; despite the fact that initiation of the treatment begins once medical detoxification in an exceedingly residential setting. narcotic antagonist blocks the euphoric and every one different effects of self-administered (and physician-administered) pills or injections (leaving the patient at a loss if he needs unplanned surgery or another painful procedure or condition requiring pain management or perhaps anesthesia, because the chemicals, fentanil and sufentanil, most ordinarily wont to induce physiological state opioids that are blocked). Its conjointly been used as treatment for inebriation. Specialists claim that narcotic antagonist cuts relapse risk throughout the primary three months by concerning 12 months. However, its so much less effective in serving to patients maintain abstinence or holding them within the drug-treatment system (retention rates average twelve-tone music at ninety days for narcotic antagonist, average fifty seven at ninety days for buprenorphine, average sixty one at ninety days for methadone).