Walking through mud; history of the Polish methadone maintenance treatment from its stakeholders' perspective.

This paper presents Polish methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) against the background of the dominant therapeutic community approach. The perspectives of various stakeholders-supporters and opponents-are examined as well as the barriers, facilitators, ideological conflicts, and financial interests influencing MMT policy and practice. In-depths interviews were carried out with 18 major stakeholders around 2012, almost two decades after the first MMT was launched. The interviews shed light on stakeholders' inter- and intragroup conflicts as well as on their official and hidden agendas, but they also show the relevant wider international and national, economic, and political contexts.