Treating Heroin Addiction

Treating Heroin Addiction

Heroin, opioid, addiction is a complicated health condition that affects a person physically and socially and requires long-term treatment and care. Many turn to opioids for self-medicating pain and/or emotional, mental health issues. A multi-pronged approach is necessary for effective treatment. Most who try one area only such as detoxification return to their previous habits. Long-term treatment requires substitution therapy and some abstinence treatment, such as a twelve-step program, with the goal of improving physical health and the ability to function socially—work, education, and non-criminal behavior. Obviously, taking the drug itself, buying it, is illegal.

Substitution Therapy

Previously, methadone was the drug treatment of choice. Now buprenorphine is safer. Its effectiveness is identical but hasn’t the side effect of overdose deaths found with methadone. Any replacement therapy is geared toward reducing withdrawal symptoms and cravings—both of which can set an addict’s recovery back—without a sedating effect and no euphoric component, part of the psychological addiction of opioids.

The replacement drug can gradually be lowered for an addict to be weaned to an opioid more easily withdrawn from or to a drug-free state. Many find this an emotionally uncomfortable or impossible choice to sustain. The length of addiction and the amount of the addictive drug that had generally been used can make a big difference in treatments.

Withdrawal Symptoms

Early symptoms of withdrawal include: hot or cold flashes, sweating, agitation, anxiety, change in libido, dehydration, fatigue, insomnia, muscle aches, restless legs, confusion, lack of motivation, tearing, runny nose, and skin crawling. In later withdrawal, these symptoms can escalate to abdominal cramping, diarrhea, dilated pupils, goose bumps, nausea, and vomiting.

This is just a list of words. Try to imagine feeling even half of them at once. Since opioid abuse is often associated with pain relief, pain medicating is also part of the treatment program and part of the reason care is a long-term process. I couldn’t find information on this, but I would imagine if taken for pain, when withdrawing a person would be even more sensitized to that pain. If properly treated, most addicts can resume or perhaps for the first time start a healthy, productive life.