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Heroin Detox Center
A heroin detox center is a facility where heroin addicts can receive help during their withdrawal from heroin. Heroin is an addictive drug that is processed from morphine. It usually appears as a white or brown powdery substance. Short-term effects include a surge of euphoria followed by alternately wakeful and drowsy states with cloudy mental functioning. Long-term users may develop collapsed veins, liver disease, and lung complications.
Few drugs are harder to quit than heroin. Without proper medical supervision, such as a heroin detox center, recovery from heroin addiction can be very difficult. In addition, few drugs can destroy your health, your relationships, and your finances as completely as heroin can. With heroin, everything else in your life comes in second place. Nothing matters as much as getting high every day. Whether it's arrest and incarceration, the loss of family, HIV or Hepatitis C infection, or even an overdose death, eventually heroin will make users pay.
In decades past, most heroin use was concentrated in poor urban areas. Today's average heroin user doesn’t fit any such cut and dry demographic profile. Heroin is cheaper and stronger than ever. Today's heroin can be snorted as easily as it can be injected. The 100,000 or so people who will start using heroin this year are just as likely suburban moms or rural high school kids as inner city "junkies."
Every day that an addict puts off entering a heroin detox center, they are risking a fatal heroin overdose.
Other serious health consequences of untreated heroin use include:
- Diseases spread through shared needles, such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B and C. Approximately 70-80 percent of new Hepatitis C infections in the U.S. each year are the result of injection drug use
- Kidney disease
- Liver disease
- Pulmonary complications
Attending a heroin detox center involves admitting there is a drug problem, seeking medical help, staying focused on the goal of rehabilitation, and treatment through a continuing program. All facts conclude that there is no easy cure or guarantee that relapse will not occur. The determination of the patient and support through family, friends, physicians or other sources must accompany the detoxification process. Long-term treatment that is drug-free is vital after one’s stay in a heroin detox center. Many times, although not physically dependent on heroin, psychological cravings will overcome the former user throwing him or her into relapse. Overseas studies have proven that detoxification does not work alone and that continued drug rehabilitation is vital to one’s long-term recovery success.
Detox, short for detoxification, is the initial part of the heroin addiction rehabilitation process. Drug withdrawal is the term used to describe the body’s reaction to the removal of any substance it has come to be dependent on. Heroin withdrawal is caused by stopping or dramatically reducing heroin abuse after heavy and prolonged use. Heroin withdrawal symptoms often include: sweating, shaking, headaches, drug craving, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, inability to sleep, confusion, agitation, depression, anxiety, and other behavioral changes.
Most heroin detox centers see their patient’s withdrawal symptoms peak between 48 and 72 hours after the last dose. Heavily addicted heroin addicts who have been abusing the drug for an extended period of time may suffer extreme side effects during their withdrawal process. These long-term heroin users must be slowly tapered down from their doses or the end result could be fatal.
Attending a heroin detox center is the first step in the recovery process because it helps to remove the remaining drug residuals in the user’s system and prepare them for drug rehabilitation. Until the heroin and other drugs have been cleansed from the recovering addict’s system they will experience severe drug cravings which will hinder their recovery process. Until the heroin detox center process is complete, the recovering addict is simply not ready for rehab, treatment and recovery. Certain types of drugs require a period of medical detox; others do not. Opiates, such as heroin and methadone often require attending a medical heroin detox center. Prescription medications, of all classifications, require medically supervised detox too. However, other illegal drugs such as marijuana, crystal meth, and cocaine (crack) many times do not require medical detox during one’s withdrawal process.
You may be thinking, aren't all heroin detox centers basically the same? This statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Every heroin detox center varies in how they handle the difficult withdrawal symptoms associated with the drug. Today, one type of heroin detox center that is popular offers "rapid detox" or "detox in a day" services that are downright dangerous. Rapid detox centers often use general anesthesia as part of their speedy detox, but this methodology led to multiple patient deaths in a 2005 Columbia University study.
Heroin detox is the first step to recovery – but not the only step. Attending a heroin detox center can open up the door to a drug-free better life - but detox is just the door, not the destination. Getting clean and STAYING clean requires a comprehensive drug rehab program that will fix the root causes of your or your loved one's addiction. Heroin addicts have a number of different types of treatments that work well. Some of them cost very little, and all of them cost less than a continuing heroin addiction does. Addiction treatment works, and the longer people remain in treatment, the better their odds of success become.
