Heroin Detox Treatments

Posts Tagged ‘pain medicine addction’

We begin by taking two pills instead of one to produce the effect that we desire. The prescriptions run out before they were supposed to. We wonder whether the pharmacy will realize that we are taking too much of the medication when we request a refill. Two soon becomes three, and four, and five… Panic sets in because one physician will not provide all the medications we now require. We begin seeing other physicians and even make up different pain stories. We take the prescriptions to different pharmacies in order not to be discovered. We hope the pharmacies’ computers will not expose us.

Eventually, we are taking enormous amounts of one or more medications. The “high” just isn’t the same anymore so we might use some other substance to give the medication a “kick.” Some of us turn to alcohol to combine with the medication. Others turn to illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Others begin to steal prescription pads from physicians and forge prescriptions. Whatever the methods, the unmanageability reaches critical stages.

Remember all of those negative feelings we thought the drugs were relieving? Well, now that we are in our addiction, they have returned with a vengeance. Our world now revolves around our medications just the way it did with our chronic pain. We become very lonely. Our medication comes first and we once again alienate ourselves from our loved ones. Shame and guilt set in and our self-esteem lowers even more. Anger, resentments, fear, frustration, depression and anxiety once again dominate our minds. We now need the medications just to feel normal and if we try to stop the medications, we become ill. We have come full circle, and are now prisoners to both our medications and chronic pain.

If you are reading this pamphlet, chances are good you have met the diagnostic criteria for chemical dependency. You only need to relate to three of the following:

For help with drug addiction treatment contact Sunrise Detox.

Recovery from alcoholism and other drug addiction often calls for breaking through layers of denial and shame. But people who face the task of recovery along with a diagnosis of cancer deal with an immediate threat to their sobriety.

“When people hear the word ‘cancer,’ there’s kind of an assumption that it’s a death sentence,” says Dr. Marvin Seppala, chief medical officer for the Hazelden Foundation. “That’s not the case, since so many cancers are treatable nowadays. Yet there’s still a chance that people in the midst of addiction treatment might say to themselves: ‘Why bother to get clean and sober? I’m not going to go through with it because I’ve got cancer.’ ”

Studies suggest that rates of substance abuse in people with cancer are lower than in the general population. However, these figures are difficult to interpret. They could simply mean that people in cancer treatment routinely hide their problems with alcohol and other drugs.

Secrecy is just one problem. “If you’re in the midst of an active addiction, you’ll also be undermining any kind of healing process related to cancer,” Seppala says. “And there’s always the question of whether some of the addictive drugs will interfere with medications used to treat cancer.”

In addition, a record of substance abuse can strain the human relationships that underlie cancer treatment. If doctors and nurses suspect that their cancer patients are lying about drug use, they may doubt anything that these patients say about their health.

People with cancer might sense this mistrust, doubt the goodwill of their health care team, and decide not to follow through with their cancer treatments. When this happens, prescriptions go unfilled, medical appointments are missed, and people with cancer can get sicker or die earlier.

A report on substance abuse issues from the National Cancer Institute underscores these problems. It also suggests ways to help people face cancer and abstain from alcohol and illicit drugs at the same time:

Gather facts without judgment. When taking a health history, doctors and nurses sometimes avoid questions about alcohol and other drug use. They may feel awkward about raising the issue, or simply assume that they’ll never get honest answers. This assumption undermines cancer treatment. When health professionals ask about drug use with a non-judgmental attitude, people with cancer are more likely to speak candidly.

Involve a multidisciplinary health care team. Treatment for people with cancer and addiction should involve specialists in mental health and addiction medicine. Many people with a history of substance abuse–including those with cancer–also struggle with anxiety, depression, or personality disorders.

Treat pain with an accurate understanding of addiction. People can become physically dependent on opioid drugs such as codeine and oxycodone (OxyContin) that are used to treat cancer pain. This means that withdrawal symptoms will occur if the drugs are suddenly stopped. In this context, however, physical dependence and addiction are not the same. Addiction refers to the compulsive use of drugs for reasons other than pain control. Careful treatment planning can relieve withdrawal without triggering such use.

Current treatments also offer many options for treating cancer pain without drugs. Examples are acupuncture, acupressure, biofeedback, chiropractic treatment, osteopathic medicine, massage therapy, and meditation.

Set realistic treatment goals. There’s a saying among members of Alcoholics Anonymous: “Getting clean and sober is simple–just change everything about your life and do it now.” This slogan reminds us that recovery from addiction requires a transformation in thinking and behavior, which calls for decades of sustained effort. The risk of relapse is high, especially with the added stress of a cancer diagnosis.

Cancer specialists need to be realistic about this fact. Treatment planning for people in recovery should set up a structure for preventing relapse–and dealing with it openly if it does occur.

For more on this topic, visit the National Cancer Institute Web site at http://www.cancer.gov/ and click on “Cancer Topics” and “Coping with Cancer.”

Source: Hazelden

A dual diagnosis is when a person has been diagnosed with two or “dual” conditions: an alcohol, drug or other substance addiction coupled with a mental health disorder. Many patients that are in addiction treatment are found to have a dual diagnosis. Of the two million people in the United States that suffer from mental illness, about 50% of them also are an alcohol, drug or other type of substance abuser. For an alcoholic, whether they have a dual diagnosis or not, they need to enter an alcohol addiction treatment program. For others that have substance abuse and addiction, a dual diagnosis, addiction treatment is not only warranted but desperately needed. Not every addiction treatment center is equipped to help this illness. It’s vitally important that a center with professional staff prepared to work with patients with a dual diagnosis is chosen.

Probably the most challenging area for health care providers is diagnosing patients who truly have a dual diagnosis. The reason a dual diagnosis is so difficult to determine is because more cases than not, a mental illness is coupled with a substance abuse and addiction situation. It is for this reason that many of these patients are placed in addiction treatment homes or centers only to discover that they are in fact dealing with a dual diagnosis. The problem is that substance dependence can masquerade as a psychiatric disorder, so many times the mental illness is not discovered or revealed until much later than at the initial evaluation.

It can be a very difficult situation to identify a patient with dual diagnosis. Most times they are in denial about their substance abuse so when the addiction is discovered, they overlook the fact that the mental illness is still exacerbating the substance problem and vice-versa. Therefore only one of the two issues is identified. And with teens it is even more difficult. With kids going through puberty and all of the emotional fluctuations that accompany that, how can you be sure that this young man or woman are actually suffering from a bi-polar disorder or even depression? For that very reason it is imperative that when seeking an addiction treatment center you find one that has an acute awareness of this dual disease. It is only then that you can truly have hope for a full recovery.

by Groshan Fabiola

Channel 5 news reports about Florida’s problem with Pain Clinics, otherwise known as pill mills and pain management clinics. These pain clinics are targeting addicts of all kinds of substance abuse- Heroin, barbiturates such as Roxys and Oxicontin junkies. In this video you will see an addict who went to these pain clinics to get help with his pain pill addiction only to get further addicted to the pain medication. Sunrise Detox center located in Lake Worth Florida, and also has a location in New Jersey, is a detox center who agrees that there is a pain clinic crisis and these places are not helping the addict they are preventing them from getting sober and setting them up for a harder detox treatment.

Pain Medicine Addiction and Detox from http://www.sunrisedetox.com