Have you lost friends, family members, or significant others because of a severe opiate addiction? When people closest to you or your loved one plead for you to stop, and you can’t, it can be the source of many fights, or sometimes a complete separation. An opiate addiction can destroy your relationships, but it also destroys your body and mind.
Opiates consume you until nothing else matters. Because of how the drug chemically alters your system, you or your loved one cannot control your abuse of opiates. Many who suffer from an opiate addiction can lose their jobs, livelihood, or entire future because they don’t seek opiate addiction treatment.
All of this is common for someone addicted to opiates. Over time, you might forget what your life was like before you started abusing the drug. At Willow Springs, we can help you or your loved one remember what is really important to you. This includes learning how to get back to the way things used to be, drug free, after recovering from an opiate addiction. It all starts with world-class treatment, detox, and recovery programs.
Opiate Withdrawal and Detox Made Easy
Words like “detox” and “withdrawal” often sound painful and scary, but it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, this connotation prevents many struggling with opiate addiction from entering rehabilitation. But with the right treatment at Willow Springs, we can manage withdrawal and detox so that the sometimes painful symptoms are minimized or entirely nonexistent.
In an effort to ease the fear of you or your loved one, we provide a guideline for what most opiate addicts experience during withdrawal. Keep in mind however that opiate withdrawal, abuse symptoms, and severity are all dependent on age, usage amount, and length of usage.
Opiate withdrawal will become more tolerable if you or your loved one seek opiate addiction treatment at a specialized rehabilitation facility. An experienced medical staff is available at Willow Springs to depend upon during detox and recovery. Resisting the temptation to use opiates to relieve the pain of withdrawal might feel overwhelming, and impossible to battle alone. This is why seeking treatment is essential, but it’s not always easy to tell when you need addiction treatment. Opiates can cloud the mind, and convince you that you don’t need treatment. However, if you’re displaying any of these symptoms, it might be time to seek treatment.
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Signs of Opiate Addiction
- Small pupils
- Itching or flushed skin
- Constipation
- Shallow or Slow breathing
- Track marks or holes on arms or other body parts from injecting
- Muscle aches
- Restlessness
- Anxiety
- Tearing eyes
- Runny nose
- Excessive sweating
- Sleeplessness
- Excessive yawning
If an opiate addiction isn’t treated, you or your loved one is at serious risk of an overdose. Some of the signs of an opiate overdose include:
- Awake, but unable to talk
- “Nodding out” or falling asleep
- Face and skin is pale or clammy
- Fingernails and lips turn blue
- Slowed breathing and pulse
- Nausea or vomiting
- Loss of consciousness
Intervention for Opiate Addiction
If you believe that your loved one is addicted, we recommend a few things to do and not to do when having a conversation about drug use and treatment with your loved one. While interventions should always be done with the help and assistance of a professional, a conversation with your loved one about their opiate addiction can go a long way.
DO
- Remain calm, and listen to what he or she is saying
- Let them know that you care about them, love them, and forgive them
- Tell them that there is hope
- Bring up the conversation when he or she is in a good place mentally
- Support any efforts they make to seek treatment
DON’T
- Raise your voice and make them feel bad about their addiction
- Confront him or her while they are under the influence
- Let them convince you they do not need treatment
- Give them reasons to leave
Opiate Addiction Receives Political Attention
As the prevalence of chronic pain and health care costs have exploded, an opiate epidemic with adverse consequences has escalated. As a result, the Obama administration announced in March 2016 a series of initiatives aimed at curbing America’s opiate addiction epidemic. These steps will make it easier to obtain medication-based treatment, expand Medicaid coverage and increase the availability of a drug that saves people from overdoses.
The startling rise in use of opiates, particularly prescription painkillers like oxycodone, often leads to use of harder, illegal versions, such as heroin. Opiate-related deaths rose beyond 28,000 in 2014, more than any year on record, the result of a trend that dates back to 1999. Opiate-related deaths have quadrupled since then.
Seek help for Opiate Addiction
Although you or your loved one will no longer experience physical withdrawal symptoms from opiate abuse, the mental side effects can last for a lifetime. At Willow Springs, we can help you or your loved one make daily, conscious decisions to keep yourself away from the situations and people that triggered your opiate abuse. We do not want the financial aspect of recovery to be a stressor for you or your loved one. As one of the best prescription drug rehab centers in Texas, we are familiar with many different types of insurance companies. Call us today and have a conversation about what you want out of rehab and recovery so you can start living the life you want.