Heroin use – and overdose deaths – has been skyrocketing around the country and South Florida is no exception. Our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program has seen an increase in the numbers of heroin addicts coming in for treatment. Similar drug treatment programs in Broward County have seen an 87 percent spike in heroin admissions in 2012 alone.
Heroin overdoses in Delray Beach alone have shot up from three in 2012 to 27 in 2013. Now, authorities are finding bags of heroin laced with the powerful synthetic opiate drug fentanyl. Fentanyl is five times more potent than heroin, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
The Fentanyl-laced bags of heroin present a real overdose danger to people in need of our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program, because many of the people who buy these bags of heroin don’t know what they’re getting. Dr. Rodriguez, the physician in charge of our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program, would like heroin users to remember that there’s no regulatory body overseeing the quality, purity or potency of illegal drugs.
Why Do Addicts Overdose?
Addicts overdose because they take more drugs than they can handle. Sometimes the people in need of our Suboxone treatment program aren’t aware of the potency of a particular batch of heroin, and use too much.
Over time, addicts build up a tolerance to their drug of choice – we see it all the time in people who come in to our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program for treatment. As they build a higher tolerance, they must take ever-higher doses of the drug to get the same effect.
Then something happens to affect the addict’s tolerance. Maybe they come into our Suboxone treatment program for treatment, get clean for a while, and then relapse. Even if the addict doesn’t come in to our Delray Beach treatment program, there are other factors that can affect his or her tolerance level. The supply of drugs might dry up, for instance, or the addict might have trouble getting money to buy drugs, or the addict may simply end up using less potent heroin for at time. No matter what the cause, a drop in tolerance can mean one more addict who never lives to get help from our Suboxone treatment.
Where’s All This Heroin Coming From Anyway?
The heroin sending record numbers of people into programs like our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program is the purest and strongest heroin that’s been seen in the United States for years. The brown powder and black-tar heroin from Mexico that used to send people into our treatment programs has been supplanted by pure white powder heroin from South America.
“Hillbilly Heroin” Has Given Way to Actual Heroin
When we started our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program years ago, it was with the goal of helping prescription painkiller addicts. Prescription painkiller addiction quickly became a huge problem throughout the country after opiate painkillers like Oxycontin hit the market in the 1990s. Dr. Rodriguez was one of the first addiction specialists to address the problem when he established our Suboxone treatment program in Delray. Prescription painkillers became known as “hillbilly heroin” because rates of opiate addiction were highest in Appalachian states like West Virginia.
“Pill mill” doctors in Florida doled out these drugs indiscriminately, to both locals and “drug tourists.” Our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program helped those struggling with opiate addiction to get clean.
Law enforcement officers cracked down on pill mills, but that wasn’t enough to eliminate the need for programs like our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program. Here at our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach facility, we understand that taking away an addict’s drug of choice isn’t enough to end that person’s thrall to addiction – especially if a cheap, plentiful substitute drug is available. The pill mill crackdown saw most prescription painkiller addicts turn to heroin, instead of to programs like our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program.
If you or someone you know is using heroin, please call our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program right away. Don’t take even one more dose – just call our Suboxone treatment Delray Beach program now at 888-699-5679.