Journal of North Khorasan

Abstract Background & Objectives: Substance abuse is one of the four crisis threatening humanity with the environmental, nuclear and population. Iran is among the countries due to the proximity of Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium and heroin extremely affected by substance dependency issue. Currently, there are about 2 million drug dependents living in Iran and this is a major health and social priority. Material & Methods: this research is a cross sectional study in 2012 -2013 on substance dependent patients treated in methadone maintenance clinics. Subjects assessed by clinical psychologists interviewing and a checklist include demographic characteristic, social, economical and pattern of abuse. We used Chi square for comparison of qualities' variables between gender and T Student and mann whitney test for quantitive variables. Data were analyzed with spss 11.5 software. Results: in this study 7342 patients who treated in methadone maintenance clinics were assessed. 82.5% male and 17.5% were female.87.5% of all subjects were married.6.6% single and 5.9 % were divorced.95% of patients had history of opium dependency and 14% had history of heroin and crack and 2.8% had history of codependency with methamphetamine. Conclusion: our results showed significant differences between demographic characteristic of patients under maintenance treatment and other groups of addicts especially in mean age and male/female ratio.