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.