Why Heroin Detox at Home Is a Bad Idea

If you’re addicted to heroin, you may be tempted to try heroin detox at home on your own. You may have heard that opiate withdrawal isn’t medically dangerous. You may also believe that you should be able to summon the willpower to quit on your own without medically-assisted opiate detox.

However, addiction isn’t a matter of willpower. Opiate addiction is particularly powerful and many opiate addicts fail to complete a cold-turkey heroin detox at home. Withdrawing from heroin and other opiates without the supervision of a medical professional isn’t exactly safe, either. The withdrawal itself may not be directly harmful, but it can cause complications that could be fatal. If you’d like to avoid methadone clinics, you can go through a medically-supervised heroin detox at home using Suboxone and Subutex.

Dangers of Quitting Heroin Cold Turkey

You’re probably aware that heroin withdrawal symptoms can be excruciating. While the withdrawal itself won’t kill you, there are several complications that might. For one thing, heroin withdrawal can last for days, even weeks, but your tolerance for heroin drops off sharply as soon as you quit using. If you lose your resolve in the middle of the detox process and decide to use heroin just one more time, you could misjudge the right dosage, take too much and suffer a fatal overdose. It happens to plenty of opiate addicts who try to quit cold turkey without medical assistance.

Heroin withdrawal also causes physical symptoms that can develop into deadly medical complications without the help of professionals. The profuse sweating, diarrhea and vomiting that happen during heroin withdrawals can easily lead to dehydration if you don’t keep yourself adequately hydrated. Dehydration is a serious condition that can be deadly. If you’re like many opiate addicts, you might not know enough about dehydration to keep yourself properly hydrated during the process of heroin detox at home.

All of this can be exacerbated by the fact that, during your period of active addiction, you probably weren’t taking good care of yourself and your health may have deteriorated further than you realized. Withdrawal only further destabilizes your system, leaving you open to infections, seizures, heart problems and other complications that could prove fatal.

Even if you manage to make it through withdrawals on your own, recovering from an addiction requires much more than simply abstaining from taking the substance of choice. You need addiction counseling to get to the bottom of why you felt the need to take heroin in the first place. Without this counseling, there’s an incredibly strong chance – almost a certainty – that you will simply return to using heroin again, even after all the suffering you did in the name of getting clean. Or, you could end up addicted to another drug. Even if you stay clean, without addiction counseling, you could struggle with lifelong emotional problems that could impact the rest of your life.

Safe Heroin Detox at Home

The safest way to get off heroin is to do it under the supervision of a doctor. You might worry that you can’t afford to go to rehab for heroin, but these days heroin addiction is typically treated with Suboxone replacement therapy. This therapy allows you to stay home while taking medication that relieves your withdrawal symptoms. You can get back to a normal way of life right away, without suffering through full withdrawals. You can also get the counseling you need to resolve the emotional and psychological issues at the core of your heroin addiction.

When you begin Suboxone heroin detox at home, you’ll see your doctor every day for about the first week, to make sure you’re adjusting to the medication properly and that your dosages are correct. Most people report feeling normal again within the first day. After your first week of home opiate detox, you’ll probably switch to seeing your doctor once a week or so while attending counseling sessions several times a week. Counseling usually takes place at night, so you can go to work or attend school during the day.

Opiate detox with Suboxone typically takes six months to two years. The length of your detox will depend on the severity of your addiction. Some people stay on Suboxone for more than two years. Others stay on it for fewer than six months.

Heroin detox at home can be safe if you do it under a doctor’s supervision. Get started on your own path to freedom now. Call 888-699-5679.

How to Find New Interests in Holistic Drug Rehab

Holistic drug rehab programs treat drug and alcohol addiction as conditions that arise from dysfunctions in every area of a person’s life. These programs focus on treating drug addicts and alcoholics as whole people, who require nurturance and healing physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially and spiritually.

A big part of your success in holistic drug rehab will hinge on your ability to discover things you enjoy that can fill the void drugs and alcohol have left in your life. As a recovering addict, discovering new interests and passions is a great way to learn the coping mechanisms that will stand you in good stead throughout the rest of your life. After all, a big part of coping with stress and hardship is turning to those things that bring you happiness and joy.

But if you’re like many folks who are new to recovery, finding new interests and passions may be harder than it sounds. For many newly recovered drug addicts and alcoholics, it’s hard to get interested in anything at all. Your brain is still recovering from the damage done by substance abuse, and you may be experiencing feelings of depression, accompanied by a lack of interest in things you once enjoyed. What’s to be done?

Leave Your Comfort Zone

While you’re in a holistic drug rehab, you’ll have unprecedented opportunities to try new things for perhaps the first time in years. While it might seem pointless or not worth the effort to try new things, try them anyway. If there’s nothing that seems interesting to you at the moment, just choose a few things that you haven’t tried before and try them. Most holistic drug rehab programs offer some form of art or fitness therapy. Take the opportunity to try painting, writing poetry or doing yoga. If your program offers adventure or experiential therapy, give it a shot – go kayaking, rock climbing or hiking. In this way, you’ll get to see some new places, meet some new people and maybe discover a new hobby.

Find a Buddy in Holistic Drug Rehab

Most people like to have someone with them when they’re encountering a new situation or having a new experience. You might find it easier to try new things in holistic drug rehab if you find a buddy who’s also interested in trying those things.

Finding a buddy can also help you dust off your social skills and learn to trust another person again. While many people in early recovery feel the need to be alone, this desire, if indulged too much, can lead the newly-recovered addict to isolate him or herself to an unhealthy degree. Once you leave your drug treatment program, make it a point to go beyond your normal home, work, 12-step and school environments to forge new relationships. Even casual acquaintances count. If you find someone with whom you share common interests or experiences, invite that person to attend some event or activity with you. New friends are often one of the best ways to discover new interests and hobbies.

Give Yourself Time to Develop Skills

When you do try a new activity in holistic drug rehab, you need to understand that you probably won’t be good at it right away. For the most part, there’s going to be a learning curve when you first pick up a new hobby. You’ll need to put in some time and effort to develop the skills necessary before you can do a new thing well.

As a recovering addict, you may be hung up on instant gratification, and your perfectionist streak may have you insisting that a new hobby isn’t worth it if you’re not good at it right away. Be patient, and you’ll find that your passion for new interests grows as you develop the skills necessary to succeed.

That said, you don’t have to achieve complete mastery of a hobby in order to enjoy or learn from it. You can enjoy a new hobby no matter how proficient you are at it, and you’ll gain self-confidence with each small improvement in your skills. Instead of focusing on how much work you have to do before you have an expert grasp of the activity, focus on how much better you’ve already become.

At our holistic drug rehab, we focus on treating addicts as whole people, and addiction as a condition that stems from dysfunctions in every area of life.

To get help for yourself or someone you care about, call us today at 888-699-5679.

Four Things You Must Know About Addiction Treatment Programs

When it comes to addiction treatment programs, myths and misconceptions abound. If you don’t have any personal experience with drug and alcohol rehab or outpatient addiction treatment, it’s no surprise that you would feel uncertain as to what to expect from a program. But you entering treatment with misconceptions or unrealistic expectations can hold you back. Here’s the truth about what to expect from drug and alcohol addiction treatment.

Addiction Treatment Programs Aren’t a Quick Fix

Many people suffer from the misconception that you can enter a drug or alcohol treatment center for a few weeks and then come home clean, sober and forever “cured” of your substance abuse disorder. In reality, addiction treatment isn’t a quick-fix; addiction is a chronic condition that can never really be cured.

That doesn’t mean that drug and alcohol rehabs don’t have value or that they don’t help a lot of people. But no matter how well an addict does in treatment or how many years of sobriety he or she can claim, addiction never goes away. A recovering addict must avoid drugs and alcohol for the rest of his or her life, or problems will develop. That’s why the graduates of addiction treatment programs are said to be “in recovery,” rather than “recovered.”

While recovery typically begins on an addict’s first day in treatment, it takes much longer than the few weeks most addicts spend in an inpatient rehab to really make that recovery stick. Laying the foundation for a successful long-term recovery can take several months to a year. For most addicts, maintaining recovery is a lifelong process that involves group and individual therapy and support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.

Treatment Can Work Even When Addicts Don’t Want It

It’s common knowledge that addiction rehab won’t work unless the addict wants to change – if someone is coerced or forced into rehab against his or her will, so to speak, then the treatment won’t work. As much sense as this appears to make, it isn’t true. If it were, drug courts wouldn’t be so successful.

It doesn’t take a drug court to coerce an addiction into treatment. Many people enter addiction treatment programs because they’ve been given an ultimatum by a spouse, partner or parent. These people wouldn’t have chosen treatment for themselves, but they get it anyway and it works for them.

Few addicts truly enter treatment voluntarily. Most are so deeply stuck in denial that they would go on insisting they don’t have a problem right up until their disease killed them. It usually takes some coercion, either by family members or the legal system, to get addicts to get help.

Relapse Happens

The chances of a recovering addict experiencing an addiction relapse are very high. Sixty to 90 percent of recovering addicts experience a relapse, depending on the type of drug they were addicted to and the severity of their addiction.

But experiencing an addiction relapse doesn’t mean that addicts have to start all over again with their recovery process. Most recovering addicts leave their addiction treatment programs more or less prepared to cope with relapse – often, recovering addicts seek help immediately after a slip-up, and even if they don’t, they’re still more likely to recover a second time. Addiction treatment gives addicts a lasting set of life skills that helps them cope with life’s ups and downs without resorting to drug and alcohol abuse.

All Addiction Treatment Programs Are Not the Same

Every addict is different, and addiction treatment must always be tailored to meet the individual needs of the person receiving it. Some drug and alcohol rehab centers are better equipped to do this than others. A facility that uses a cookie cutter approach to treatment will not meet the needs of many of its clients, and while many addiction treatment programs are of excellent quality, there are some less than reputable facilities that are not capable of providing adequate treatment.

If you or someone you love is struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, don’t wait another minute to get help. Addiction is a serious disease that can be deadly if left untreated.

Call the Delray Center for Healing today at 888-699-5679 to find out how beneficial healing can be. 

5 Mistakes People Make When Getting a Loved One into Rehab

When someone you love needs addiction treatment  from a rehab for drug addicts, it’s hard to know what to do. By the time you see your loved one’s need for addiction treatment, it’s likely that addiction has already destroyed the person he or she was. You know that the only way to save your loved one, your family and even yourself is to get that person treatment.

Even though your loved one might resist the idea of going into an inpatient rehab at first, you should know that treatment can still be effective even if the addict was initially coerced into seeking help. Your loved one can succeed at treatment even if you take steps to force him or her into treatment against his or her objections.

Nevertheless, many friends and loved ones of drug addicts make mistakes when trying to get their loved one into rehab. If you know what these mistakes are, you can avoid them, and get your loved one the help he or she needs much sooner.

1) Not Educating Yourself About Addiction

Despite the fact that your loved one needs to enter a rehab for drug addicts, you – and the rest of your circle – may be suffering from some common misconceptions about addiction. Before you talk to your loved one about his or her problem, research treatment facilities or plan an intervention, your first step should be to educate yourself about the nature of addiction – and its effects on the friends and family members of addicts as well as the addicts themselves.

The best way to learn about addiction is to begin attending local support groups for the relatives and friends of addicts. Al-Anon is one such group. There, you can learn from the experiences of others who have been through the same situation. Other members can point you towards helpful books and other resources, and share with you their own insights about getting someone into a rehab for drug addicts.

2) Holding an Impromptu Intervention

An intervention is a valuable and important way to convince a loved one of the need to go to a rehab for drug addicts. However, it’s most effective if it’s carefully planned and orchestrated, usually with the help of a professional interventionist. An intervention that is not carefully planned is unlikely to have the desired effect.

To be effective, an intervention must be attended by all of the friends and relatives who are affected by, or concerned about, the addict’s drug use. During the intervention, each person must take the opportunity to express their concerns and explain to the addict how his or her drug use has affected them. You should also have a plan in place to get your loved one into a rehab for drug addicts immediately following the intervention, or be prepared to enact consequences – such as withdrawing financial support – if your loved one refuses to get help.

3) Being Judgmental About Rehab for Drug Addicts

It’s hard not to be judgmental when someone you love continues to abuse drugs or alcohol even as his or her life falls apart because of it. But your loved one has already experienced enough judgment, and heaping more judgment upon his or her head will only drive him or her away. Instead of passing judgment or falling back on philosophical or religious arguments, stick to painting a picture of how your loved one’s addiction hurts him or her, you, and others the addict loves.

4) Making Idle Threats

If you threaten consequences for your loved one if he or she doesn’t get help at a rehab for drug addicts, you have to be prepared to follow through with those consequences. If you make empty threats, the addict will think you’re not serious about getting him or her into addiction treatment. You’ll only encourage your loved one to keep using.

5) Not Supporting Your Loved One’s Recovery

Once you do get your loved one into an addiction treatment facility, it’s important to follow the advice of the treatment specialists. Many people think they know better than their doctors what’s good for them; don’t be one of those people. Assuming you choose a reputable facility, the treatment specialists know what’s best for your loved one.

This also means you should refuse any practical or emotional support that could help the addict stop treatment or backslide after leaving treatment. If your loved one decides to leave the rehab for drug addicts before his or her program ends, don’t pick him or her up or wire any money for travel expenses. Instead, encourage him or her to remain in treatment – and remind your loved one of the consequences you established at the intervention.

If you have a loved one who needs drug treatment, our counselors can help.

Call us today at 888-699-5679 to learn more about our programs. 

Do Frequent ER Visits Mean a Need Drug or Alcohol Treatment Programs?

According to a new study from researchers at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, people who visit the ER at least 10 times a year are likely to be addicts in need of drug and alcohol treatment programs. While not all people who visit the ER frequently are addicted to alcohol or drugs, the study found that at least 77 percent of those who use the ER 10 or more times a year suffer from a substance abuse problem.

Addiction Among Frequent ER Visitors

Emergency room physicians have long suspected that most of the patients who frequently seek emergency medical services need drug and alcohol treatment programs, but this is one of the first studies to take a look at the actual numbers. The researchers examined the addiction history of 255 “super-frequent” users who sought care at Henry Ford’s Emergency Department 10 times a year or more between 2004 and 2013. They also examined the data to determine if imposing prescribing guidelines for narcotic medications had any effect on the number of patients who came into the ER seeking those medications.

The study found that 77 percent of those who visit the ER at least 10 times a year have a substance abuse disorder. Forty-seven percent of those were addicted to opiate painkillers. Forty-four percent were addicted to illegal drugs, like cocaine. Thirty-five percent of those who seek care in the ER 10 times a year are alcoholics.

Prescribing Guidelines Significantly Reduce ER Overuse

Many of the addicts who seek frequent ER care want a prescription for narcotic painkillers. Women are more likely than men to use the ER for this purpose. In 2011, ERs around the nation saw 2.5 million visits involving drug misuse or abuse. The rate of ER visits related to drug abuse or misuse climbed 19 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network. An ER that receives an average of 75,000 visits per year can expect to receive as many as 262 monthly visits from addicts seeking narcotic drugs.

The study found that, since Henry Ford Hospital implemented the Community Resources for Emergency Department Overuse (CREDO) in 2004, the number of yearly visits from addicts seeking narcotic painkillers dropped from 32.4 times a year to 13.8 times a year. Among those in need of drug or alcohol treatment programs who were not specifically looking for narcotic painkillers in the ER, yearly visits dropped from 33 to 11.6.

Keeping People in Need of Drug or Alcohol Treatment Programs Out of the ER

Obviously, people who need emergency medical care for reasons related to drug and alcohol abuse deserve treatment just as much as anyone else. But ER doctors can’t keep these people from over-using emergency department facilities without addressing the underlying cause of their frequent ER visits, which is drug and alcohol addiction.

Increasing access to drug and alcohol treatment programs is the only way to effectively reduce or eliminate the overuse of emergency departments by people struggling with substance abuse. Providing the treatment substance abusers need guarantees that they no longer need to visit the ER for medical care due to misuse of drugs and alcohol, or to try and obtain narcotic painkillers from an ER physician.

Jennifer Peltzer-Jones, RN, PsyD, lead author of the Henry Ford Hospital study, put it this way: “Boosting federal and state funding for substance abuse programs could help alleviate some of the frequent use of Emergency Departments as sources of addiction care.”

Indeed, ERs aren’t equipped to provide the long-term care addicts need in order to get well. The most an ER physician can do is treat the symptoms of drug overdose or alcohol poisoning, and then send the addicts back out into the streets, where they’ll just go right back to drug and alcohol use. Even when ER physicians can make a referral to drug and alcohol treatment programs, the addiction epidemic sweeping our nation means that these programs are often underfunded and over-booked.

If you or someone you love is struggling with a substance abuse disorder, don’t rely on government-funded drug and alcohol treatment programs.

Call 888-699-5679 today to learn more about affordable, effective addiction treatment in Delray Beach.