At the 500-patient Model Treatment Program on First Street NE, the line forms early, and daily.
Patients show their ID to the burly guard.
Move upstairs to the Spartan, white-walled clinic. Wait their turn to approach the window at the nurses' station behind inch-thick glass. Announce their case number and receive their cherry-flavored dose, the small cup of methadone. Then speak, to prove they aren't saving it to sell on the street. In some ways, the methadone clinic system has remained unchanged for 30 years, since the synthetic narcotic came into wide use for treating addiction to heroin and other opiates.