The aim of rehabilitation is to help people who want to resume their normal everyday life with their family, job and community that they live in without the affliction of opioid addiction. The majority of people that enter and remain inside rehab treatment quit using drugs, stop any criminal behaviour, take back their social life and function at their healthiest – according to research patients that undergo rehab treatment for opioid addiction, find it is the most effective solution to treating their addiction.
What Is The Most Effective Way To Treat Opioid Addiction?
One of the main aspects of treating opioid addiction and a crucial component in a person’s road to recovery, in rehabilitation they have medical professionals who are able to provide the necessary pharmacological treatment – opioid addiction is a serious addiction and many people are affected by it will have been using the substance for years and it is highly dangerous to attempt to detox by yourself so it is highly recommended that you seek out rehab to treat you effectively.
When in treatment for opioid addiction, the medical staff will use certain controlled medications at recommended doses to wean a person from opioids and help them battle against severe withdrawal symptoms that may come with removing the substance from your body. Some of the medications that they will use are:
- Buprenorphine
- Naltrexone
- Methadone
Using these medications isn’t trying to ‘replace’ the addiction with another one but these certain medications are highly effective in lessening withdrawal symptoms and the intense cravings that patients suffer from. These medications balance the brain circuits that have been damaged from an opioid addiction allowing the patient’s brain to recover as they work on their rehabilitation.
What Percentage Of Users Relapse After Rehab?
Many people think the road to recovery is finished once they leave rehabilitation. However, patients must manage and continue their recovery every day as addiction isn’t something that leaves overnight. Unfortunately, there is a small minority that does relapse once leaving rehabilitation, this could be for a variety of reasons.
This doesn’t mean that all hope is lost when there is a relapse, as you will have access to support workers who you can reach out to who can help guide you back on the right path.
Through rehabilitation, you will learn more about relapse and learn about ways that you can build a defence against the triggers that cause you to crave opioids through therapy.
Rehab isn’t a quick fix but if you are dedicated to changing your lifestyle, you can get to the healthiest version of yourself again.
In order to avoid relapse, there are several different types of strategies that rehab centres use to improve your physical and mental health in order to suppress any potential cravings.
The strategies change depending on the person due to not everybody’s addiction journey being the same – one that is popular in rehabilitation is HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired.) These denote four mental conditions that raise the chance of a relapse.
When you experience one or more of these phases, your defence is weaker which makes you crave substance thus raising the chance of a relapse.
Rehab will help you plan correctly when you experience these conditions heavily and you’ll be able to enhance every element of your health by working on:
- Stress Management
- Relationship Management
- Support Network
- Trigger Management
Is It Possible To Completely Recover From Addiction?
Addiction is an affliction that can be treated and cured over time. Due to hundreds of years of in-depth studying about the science of addiction and studying rehabilitation of substance use disorders, this has resulted in a massive development of evidence-based approaches that assist those who are trying to quit opioid substances and finally get back to their normal lives.
According to research, it takes the brain around 90 days to ‘reset’ on its own and get rid of the initial impact of a drug. They were able to see this when an addict had healed their brain for at least 90 days – their appropriate decision-making and analytical skills were heavily re-boosted in the frontal lobe of the brain.
It is a highly difficult task for someone who is severely addicted to opioids to just refrain from taking the substance again. A person who suffers from opioid addiction has neurological alterations that lead them to compulsive opioid drug usage. This type of alteration makes it very hard for someone to fight the urge of using the substance.
In addition, substance addiction and constant misuse can damage the brain’s reward system. Opiates cause a person to feel ‘extremely happy’ when they use them. Those who develop an opioid addiction will seek out the feeling.
However, prolonged opiate use will damage the brain’s capacity to create natural analgesics and the feel-good hormone dopamine. If the person isn’t taking the substance then they will start to feel depressed as they’ve built up a dependency.
How Do You Prevent Opioid Abuse?
There are different types of several techniques to lessen opioid exposure and treat an opioid use disorder while in rehabilitation, some of the techniques include:
- Controlled Prescription Drug (Doses To Lessen Cravings From Medical Professionals.)
- Fitness Therapy
- CBT Therapy
- Group Therapy
- DBT Therapy
There are lots of different types of techniques available in rehab and the staff will create tailored plans based on your personality and current situation.
Rehabilitation care uses quality-improvement initiatives to increase the use of advised practices such as: educating the patients on how to handle opioid drugs and improving their understanding of the dangers of using opioid drugs and teaching more in-depth about the burdens that come with an opioid addiction such as an overdose, financial problems and more.
As previously spoken about there are a lot of different strategies that rehab centres will use due to the fact that no person’s road to recovery is the same but there are common strategies in place that are highly effective that rehab staff may offer for you.
What Are Some Signs Of Opioid Addiction?
There are many questions that you must ask yourself to recognise the severity of your opioid addiction and some of the causes that may make you seek out the substance:
- Do you make decisions that are risky and harmful?
- Do you use drugs when impaired and kept using?
- Is there a history of drug use in my family?
- Do you get withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking the drugs?
- Do you turn to opioids in order to get away from your mental health problems or emotional pain?
- Do you find taking opioids 'fun' and see it as an escape from reality?
If you have answered yes to a majority of these questions then there is a massive chance that you currently have an opioid addiction and you should immediately seek out rehab treatment to help treat your addiction and get you back on the road to recovery.
