5 Tips On Making Detox Work for You

At the most basic level, a detox program holds you long enough to get the last physical vestiges of a drug out of your system. This program holds you in one place, making sure that you have food, shelter, and protection until you have dealt with the physical aspects of your addiction. Though detox can be difficult and though getting through is certainly an achievement, it is still important to understand that this is only the first step of your recovery. Take a moment to consider these five steps to make sure that you are getting the most out of your time in a detox center.

1. Use the Counseling

If there is counseling at the place where you are getting detox, use it. It is always a good idea to talk to people about your issues, and you will discover that insights are entirely possible. Use the counseling to get new resources and make sure that you are taking in everything that you can. This can help you move forward more quickly with your recovery.

2. Plan a Network

When you are in detox, there may be rules about whether you are allowed to contact anyone at all. When you are alone, you will find that this is a good time to start planning what kind of network you are going to have when you get out. Think about people who you know are willing to help you, and the people who you will go to first. They may be people who can help you with physical things like food or shelter, or they may be able to help you with the emotional after-effects of detox.

3. Look Towards the Near Future

Plenty of people in detox look forward to a distant future where they have their addiction taken care of and where they are completely healed. While it is important to have distant goals to think about, you should also think about the near future. The part directly after detox is not going to be easy, and in many ways, it is more difficult, more boring, yo might think! and more tedious than what detox was like.

4. Keep a Journal

You can have a lot of revelations about yourself and what you realize about where you have been when you are in detox. Many people with addictions end up doing a lot of back and forth, in that they come to the same conclusions over and over again. The truth is that you can have a lot of revelations about yourself when you are in detox, and you can hang on to them if you write them down. Ask for a journal, or even just some paper to help you get started.

5. Take the Treatment That Is Offered

Professional centers offer various treatment methods that can help ease the discomfort associated with withdrawals, in order to increase the chances of success during detox. These treatment methods can range from yoga, acupuncture, exercise therapy, nutritional therapy, and art therapy. Some clients with severe withdrawal may be offered medication under a doctor’s guidance to ease their symptoms and possibly prevent life-threatening conditions. Some people that enter a detox center are convinced that they should never partake in the treatment methods offered. This can lead to them missing out on opportunities that can be very helpful to them.

If you are in a spot where you need to think about detoxing, remember that there is a whole new world waiting for you afterwards. Some people go straight from detox to a rehabilitation center, and this gives you a lot of the support that you might need to move ahead. Make sure that you know what your plan is before you close the doors of the detox center behind you, and you’ll be in better shape than you might think.

 

What is it Like to Experience Withdrawal From Drugs?

As a destructive addiction, drug use impacts the body in extremely negative ways, and various drugs cause everything from permanent changes in behavior to organ failure to death. Unfortunately, sometimes the threat of death isn’t enough to cause someone to make the decision to attempt recovery since the withdrawal symptoms from some drugs are terrible and almost unbearable. Most people addicted to drugs must undergo a detox program to quit drugs because the process itself may cause health problems and the feelings of withdrawal can cause someone to relapse quickly.

Different withdrawal symptoms may result from addiction to depressants, stimulants, or opioids, so a medical professional will often create specific types of detox plans (sometimes called withdrawal therapy) depending on the type of addiction. The effects of withdrawal are often the exact opposite of the type of experience a person would have while abusing the drug. This means that the naturally addictive properties of drugs are made much worse because of the reversal of a person’s “high” into a type of unbearable pain. It is particularly common for drug addicts to avoid recovery just to avoid withdrawal symptoms. The National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine offers some startling timelines regarding when withdrawal symptoms may impact the body. The effects of withdrawal may begin anywhere from a few hours after the last use, such as with stimulants like cocaine, or after a few days, such as with hallucinogenic drugs like marijuana.

Depressants

Different types of depressants include drugs like barbiturates (Phenobarbital and Nembutal), alcohol (ethanol), gamma hydroxybutyric acid (sleeping pills), and benzodiazepines (Xanax and Valium). Side effects from withdrawal range from minor to extreme. Some of the lesser types of withdrawal symptoms include:

• Anxiety
• Insomnia
• Sweating

There are also a variety of much worse symptoms that heavy addiction to depressants will cause on the body during the detoxification process and those symptoms often include:

• Hallucinations
• Tremors
• Seizures

Opioids

Whenever someone is prescribed a drug for pain after surgery or after an accident, the drug offered will be opioids. Different types of opioids to which people commonly become addicted include Oxycontin, codeine, and morphine. Heroin is also a type of opioid although it hasn’t been used for medicinal purposes for over a hundred years since it was declared a harmful narcotic by the United States government with the 1914 Harrison Narcotic Act. The impact of opioid withdrawal is always severe and will begin within 24 hours of the last use of the drug. Some of the less stressful types of withdrawal symptoms for opioids include:

• Anxiety
• Cravings
• Sweating

The most severe symptoms are extensive and extreme and mean that quitting this type of drug represents one of the hardest types of detoxification. Severe symptoms include:

• High Blood Pressure
• Diarrhea
• Insomnia
• Stomach Cramps
• Vomiting

Stimulants

As the name would suggest, stimulants increase the level of alertness within the body, and one of the most destructive elements of stimulant addiction is that the body experiences an increased tolerance for the drug over time. This means addicts must take higher concentrations of drugs during a long addiction. Different types of stimulants include drugs like cocaine, ephedrine (common as a herbal supplement), and even caffeine. Some of the basic symptoms of withdrawal from stimulants, like cocaine, include:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Fatigue

More advanced symptoms of withdrawal that come during the recovery process include:

• Paranoia
• Psychosis
• Thoughts of Suicide

The best way to avoid having to experience withdrawal symptoms is to avoid addiction in the first place. Unfortunately, millions of people are addicted to various types of drugs and must undergo an extraordinarily difficult detoxification filled with unbearable pain and withdrawal. The rates of drug abuse are climbing each year, which means more people than ever will have to go through withdrawal in order to quit a drug addiction. It’s important to have a strong support system during any attempts to recover from drug addiction.