If you’re addicted to heroin or other opiates, you’re not the only one – one million Americans are struggling with opiate addiction today, and as many as one-fifth of those are addicted to heroin. Those numbers are on the increase, and with tragic consequences for many addicts and the families they leave behind when they suffer overdose. If you’re addicted to heroin, prescription painkillers, morphine, fentanyl, or other opiate drugs, here are five reasons to get Suboxone therapy today.

Risk of Disease

The health effects of heroin itself aren’t the only dangers that should make you seriously consider entering Suboxone therapy. If you inject heroin, you’re in serious danger of contracting hepatitis C (HCV) or HIV, two potentially deadly diseases that spread through contact with blood and bodily fluids. If you share needles or other equipment, you could contact one or both of these diseases or spread them to someone else.

While recovery from heroin addiction is possible, you can never get rid of HCV or HIV. But entering Suboxone treatment can prevent you from catching one of these incurable and deadly diseases.

Long-Term Health Effects

Long-term users of heroin can suffer from a range of problems associated with use of the drug. These can include collapsed veins, serious infections of the heart lining or valves of the heart, chronic constipation, kidney disease, liver disease and gastrointestinal cramping. These complications can be just as deadly as overdose or infectious diseases associated with heroin use.

It’s not just the drug itself that’s toxic, however. Heroin is illegal – that means it isn’t regulated by the FDA or any other governing body. Dealers can cut the drug with whatever they want, to expand their supply and make more money. And they don’t particularly care if the ingredients they add to the drug are bad for human consumption. These toxic additives can cause damage to the lungs, brain, kidneys and liver, clog blood vessels and lead to permanent disability or death. The sooner you enter Suboxone therapy, the less likely you’ll be to encounter dangerous tainted heroin.

Fertility Consequences

If you’re a woman using heroin, you should enter Suboxone therapy as soon as possible, before you get pregnant. Using heroin while pregnant can cause miscarriage, and it can also be a contributing factor in other complications like low birth weight and developmental delays. Pregnant heroin addicts don’t tend to keep up with their prenatal care as well as they ought and often subject both themselves and their babies to poor nutrition.

Furthermore, your baby could be born with an opiate addiction of his or her own, and suffer from neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a serious medical condition which requires hospitalization. If you’re still using heroin when your baby is born, you could lose your baby. If you’re already pregnant, entering Suboxone therapy can reduce your risk of pregnancy complications, improve your baby’s birth weight, reduce his or her NAS symptoms and lower the risk that he or she will suffer from developmental delays as a result of your drug use during pregnancy. The sooner you enter Suboxone therapy, the better your baby’s chances of living a normal life will be – and the better your chances of being a normal parent.

Prison Time

Using heroin is a crime – and by some estimates, as many as 80 percent of the people incarcerated in U.S. prisons are doing time for a drug-related offense. And going to jail once doesn’t guarantee that you won’t go back again – most people who go to jail for a drug-related crime end up going back to jail for another drug-related crime, even if they managed to stay clean while in jail. If you don’t want to do time, enter Suboxone treatment as soon as possible.

Avoid Acute Withdrawal Syndrome with Suboxone Therapy

Acute withdrawal syndrome – the excruciating physical and mental symptoms you begin to endure when you start to go into heroin withdrawal – is enough to keep most addicts hooked. But with Suboxone therapy, you don’t have to endure withdrawals. Buprenorphine will relieve your withdrawal symptoms so you can get back to living a normal life right away.

If you or someone you love is struggling with an addiction to heroin or other opiates, Suboxone therapy can help.

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