Drug Addiction as a Medical Illness The Many Treatment Options

Drug Addiction as a Medical Illness The Many Treatment Options

Health and Fitness February 4, 2016

If you have been a victim of substance abuse, you may need to consider working with addiction treatment centers. While searching for the best among the available addiction organizations, you must look into the design of the programs offered. Each addiction life coach may have a different approach towards rehabilitation.

To get the best addiction placement services, ensure you do thorough research. It is essential that you ask friends, coworkers, and family to get referrals to the top-rated addiction treatment centers in your local area.

You should consider understanding the addiction recovery basics before choosing an addiction recovery center. With this, you can decide on a facility with an excellent approach to help you complete the addiction recovery process. Some centers prefer individual treatment, while others opt for group therapy.

In some cases, there is provision for both. As much as you may wish to have a program solely, you must get counseling. Interaction is essential, especially in helping to avoid a relapse in the addiction.

Most facilities offer an addiction treatment program for one month. Consider the amount of time you might spend in the addiction treatment center. By doing this, you can organize your schedule and create time for the treatment program conveniently.

Opioid dependence treatment

It’s no secret that drug abuse is a big problem in this country, but the statistics may shock you. 9.4% of the U.S. population live with substance abuse, about 24.6 million people, and that includes 1.9 million living with addiction to prescription pills, and 517,000 addicted to heroin. Opioid use disorder covers a wide range of drug addiction, including prescription pills and often leading to heroin. Prescription pain killers are the main gateway drug towards heroin, and in fact studies show 75% of people addicted to opioids switch to heroin because it’s cheaper.

Opioid dependence stems somewhat from the fact that they are legal, in prescription form, so they are easier to get even if you don’t have a prescription. In fact, over 50% of people over age 12 have used prescription pain relievers not prescribed to them, for nonmedical reasons. This means that over half the population is technically abusing these drugs. This is particularly a problem with youth, who are more susceptible to addiction, and apparently have easy access, as 2,500 of American youth every day use a prescription opioid for the first time. Since these drugs can be a gateway to heroin and can be addictive just from the first few uses, this is a big problem.

Addiction treatment is very important and treatment centers or drug rehab centers are always an option. These can be expensive but may be the best solution to a treatment of opioid dependence. Drug rehabilitation treatment centers will provide 24 hour care and design a program for recovering drug addicts. There are also walk-in clinics, that mostly provide support and sometimes less dangerous drugs to ween people off of heroin and opiates, such as Suboxone and Vivitrol.

Suboxone is used in smaller doses to treat chronic pain, and in higher doses to treat opioid dependency. It is a combination of Buprenorphine and Naloxone which are semi-synthetic and used for pain relief. When thinking about options for the more severe cases of opioid addiction, Suboxone can be a good option.



Another drug that is administered in a different way is Vivitrol, which is meant to prevent relapses of recovering addicts. Treatment centers will administer a shot that lasts 30 days and is meant to reduce cravings and block opioid receptors in the brain. This is a different method than using another narcotic, such as Suboxone, to treat addiction. The main difference is that a person has to be drug and alcohol free for seven to ten days before they are allowed to take Vivitrol.

Whatever the treatment of choice is for opiate dependency, remember that there are a lot of options, and seeking treatment is a very important first step. Medical advances have made it easier to get help, and a combination of this and rehabilitation therapy or counseling helps many people get back on track.