I don’t think this is a surprising result, and it certainly does argue in favor of methadone over cold turkey. However, a simpler solution and maybe a better control than substituting methadone for heroin would be a treatment program that provides a maintenance dose of heroin. Maybe this doesn’t technically constitute ‘recovery’, but as long as we’re just looking at life outcomes I believe it also works well. I guess I’d have to look at the results from the UK (where they had such a system for a long time) if I wanted to provide some supporting references…
