Heroine addiction and treatment

There are eight million heroine addicts in the world at the moment. Recovery from heroine is not an easy process. It is considered as the most difficult addiction treatment by authorities.

Medical treatment is effective for withdrawal symptoms which makes recovery easier. When it comes to heroine addiction, the 80% ratio of relapse puts preventing relapse more important than the recovery itself.

There are also interacting drugs with heroine. As WikiPedia puts:

Opioids are strong central nervous system depressants, but regular users develop physiological tolerance. In combination with other central nervous system depressants, heroin may still kill even experienced users, particularly if their tolerance to the drug has reduced or the strength of their usual dose has increased.

Toxicology studies of heroin-related deaths reveal frequent involvement of other central nervous system depressants, including alcohol, benzodiazepines such as temazepam (Restoril; Normison), and, to a rising degree, methadone. Ironically, benzodiazepines are often used in the treatment of heroin addiction while they cause much more severe withdrawal symptoms.

Cocaine sometimes proves to be fatal when used in combination with heroin. Though "speedballs" (when injected) or "moonrocks" (when smoked) are a popular mix of the two drugs among users, combinations of stimulants and depressants can have unpredictable and sometimes fatal results. In the United States in early 2006, a rash of deaths was attributed to either a combination of fentanyl and heroin, or pure fentanyl masquerading as heroin particularly in the Detroit Metro Area; one news report refers to the combination as 'laced heroin', though this is likely a generic rather than a specific term.

And for options of recovery:

In situations where the addictive quality is judged to be of lower consequence than other measures (such as cases of terminal illness) diamorphine is a valuable drug. The slow and often very painful end to a cancer sufferer's life can be greatly relieved by the careful use of diamorphine to relieve the pain and worry. In this situation the drug can allow a sufferer to live their last few weeks more actively and independently than would otherwise be possible.

Source: Wikipedia.

Types of drug rehabilitation

When residential treatment is selected, it is important to put emphasis on the powerful nature of substance abuse and addiction. Addiction usually does not come as the only life-problem in such cases.

Drug rehab programs have to have their own unique philosophy in order to overcome the charismatic aspect of addiction. Treatment may have to differ according to each individual. Working on self-esteem is a great idea to raise chances of early recovery and mostly, this is the work of cognitive therapy.

Drug intervention services are also of crucial importance when you want to care and rescue your loved ones. The problem is close relatives or very close friends sometimes are not able to cope with their lovely children or special ones or buddies addiction.

When pharmacology (pharmacotherapy) is selected the primary method for treatment then usually methadone and buprenorphine are used. Pharmacotherapy does not yet have an instant effect. Yet, it helps very much in recovery beacuse it eliminates some of the withdrawal symptoms.

First steps of drug addiction recovery would make you feel temporarily worse

One of the most important issues during drug addiction rehab and treatment is that people feel worse temporarily in the beginning of the process. This very normal because first of all, any medium to big change in human life causes stress.

Personal change that one engages in during such a substance abuse treatment is not a small one.

One alternative approach to this first round stress might be to learn meditation. Now, when we say meditation, many people would think of long durations in uncomfortable positions. However, this is not a necessary part of meditation. There are even special chairs designed for meditation and they are very comfortable.

What important here is to learn to become still and to feel your inner strength. When somebody first hears this, it comes very impolite because it makes people feel that as if nobody is understanding their pain.

The most strong reason of this first phase stress and depression is that the person experiences both the physical withdrawal effects and the psychological effects.

The duration of this phase differs from person to person as well as from treatment to treatment. Psychiatric medicine in that phase looks like very effective.

It is also spiritual, anyway. Don't give up and you will be the next success story.

Drug and alcohol addiction treatment from a psychotherapeutic perspective

You can recover from drug addiction with the help of psychotherapy. Clinical psychology as a scientific method offers drug addiction treatment. However, psychotherapy is a little different in approach.

Both analytic and dynamic psychotherapy models can offer you treatment in a social context instead of a hardcore scientific context, pretty much as in Christian drug treatment.

The reason behind this is that psychotherapy - at least some schools of psychotherapy - in fact deals with abstract notions. In my previous post about religious approaches to addiction treatment, I stated that many contemporary drug rehab centers are based on the assumption that if the addicts social and psychological factors change, the addictive behavior will change accordingly. So, psychotherapy also stays in that perspective although it is different than a religious approach.

Every process of psychological counseling is not the same but I can still provide examples to explain what I mean.

Well, here is this addicted person that seeks addiction help. There are reasons that the person is addicted. One possible reason for that may be that the person doesn't feel that he or she is an adult person but still have feelings of childhood. The person feels as a child but her body is an adult. Suppose that this person has nobody around her to give her the care as if she is a child. Now, this person should find her way into something that will feed her childish, infantile feelings and starts dealing with addictive substances.

I know that the example is not really comprehensive enough but I just tried to show how a psychotherapist would establish his assessment for addiction treatment. It is an abstract establishment. It is a different framework to understand her tendency to addictive substances. It is about reasons and bringing the reasons to one's consciousness so that he or she can deal better with them.

One drawback of such a psychotherapeutic process is that it takes time. It usually takes years to recover. Moreover, a talk therapy usually consists of weekly counseling, one hour per week. This may not be enough for an agitated person. If the status of addiction is very high then hospitalization or a drug rehabilitation center would help more.