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maum wrote:

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No seriously. Is it?

I guess it depends on your definition of a psychotropic medication. Methadone is used as a replacement for heroin or morphine for people addicted to those drugs, allowing addicts to have a more normal lifestyle. With gradual tapering down of the dosage, in time, the addict can become free of opiate addiction, as coming off of methadone is considered to be easier than coming off, say, heroin. So, in that regard, you could call it a "psych drug," as it's used to treat a psychiatric or psychological condition (addiction). It's also used to treat chronic pain. Ironically, heroin was invented by the Bayer company (the same people who brought you aspirin) as a way of "treating" opium and morphine addiction.

The definition of what constitutes a "psych" drug is in many ways arbitrary. For example, thorazine (generic name chlorpromazine) is an antipsychotic that can be useful in treating hallucinations and delusions such as are found in schizophrenia, but is also helpful in preventing vomitting, nausea, and hiccups. Clonidine is sometimes used in the treatment of ADHD and tics but is known primarily as a blood pressure medication.

maum wrote:

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But I thought heroin addiction was physical, rather than psychological? If it's used to treat chronic pain, it can't be a psych drug?
I was rather confused by that.

I think that most medical practitioners wouldn't consider methadone to be a psychiatric drug. Addiction itself can be very complicated; for example, a former heroin addict who's been clean for a while might still get cravings if he or she passes through a neighbourhood in which that person used to buy heroin; this is evidence that heroin addiction is at least to some degree psychological as well as physiological. The environment provides a cue to "remember" past cravings.

The larger point I was trying to make is that the distinction between a psychiatric and a nonpsychiatric drug is sometimes arbitrary; if it works with psychiatric symptoms, then it's a psych drug. There's a very witty and informative blogger called "The Last Psychiatrist" ( http://www.thelastpsychiatrist.com ) who makes a similar point about distinguishing between different classes of psychiatric drugs:

What makes a drug an antipsychotic? Well, it treats psychosis. Fine-- but does that exclude its efficacy for something else? If it is later found to be efficacious in, say, depression, then what do you call it? Is the drug an antipsychotic that's also good for depression, or an antidepressant that's also good for psychosis?

There's no value in the label "antipsychotic" or "antidepressant" except what we give it. It's a drug that treats psychosis and depression, not an antipsychotic that treats depression (or the other way around). If you can't see the difference, stop reading now and go back to watching American Idol.

But, if you want a quick-and-dirty definition of a psych drug, then a psychiatric drug is any drug whose main clinical use is treating psychiatric symptoms. As I've mentioned, however, that doesn't preclude other classes of drugs (e.g. blood pressure medication, antivirals) from being used to treat psychiatric symptoms. Many drugs out there have multiple effects and multiple methods of action. As an example from distant history, the very first class of antidepressants (the MAOIs or Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors) were discovered when doctors at a tuberculosis sanitarium noticed that patients on two particular antituberculosis drugs seemed happier and cheerier after they had been taking them for a while. If I recall correctly, one of these compounds was chemically similar to a fuel that was being used in rockets. Hence, you go from rocket fuel to antibacterial to antidepressant, all describing the same compound or class of compounds. (I always wonder who came up with the idea of giving rocket fuel to tuberculosis patients).

ETA: Methadone maintenance is still being used to "treat" opiate addiction in my particular corner of Canada. I'm not so sure about its use in treating chronic pain in my little corner of the world. My experience with methadone comes largely from listening to addicts whining about their dosage being reduced, in their opinion, too quickly. Lest you think I'm an unsympathetic bastard, there is nothing as whiny as an opiate addict who is going through a forced withdrawal of methadone or their particular opiate of choice. Opiate addicts in withdrawal have no tolerance for any kind of pain, physical or psychological. A paper cut is like having a limb amputated without anesthesia for this group of people.

I should also apologize for giving an answer that may be more confusing than helpful. Every so often I let my tendency to be pedantic run wild. To summarize all of the above, if a medication is used mainly to treat psychiatric sypmtoms, it's considered a psych drug. Methadone wouldn't be considered as such by most medical practitioners.