The Battle of Heroin Addiction - Recovery Treatment Substance Abuse

Heroin is one of the most dangerous substances that humans ever created. It is an addictive substance that chemically changes your brain, and it can kill you. It is never too late to get help and accept treatment for heroin addiction. There are people who can help. Call 912-214-3867 and talk to someone who wants to help you get better. Our team of specialists will help you get the proper care that you need. Do not hesitate. Call now, and start a healthier and happier life tomorrow.

The Elements of Heroin

What is heroin exactly? Heroin comes from morphine, which is a substance that organically comes from the opium poppy plant. The plant, called Papaver somniferum by scientists, originates in South America and South Asia. Morphine is an organic compound extracted from the seed pod of the plant. Heroin is then synthetically created from the morphine.

Let us put that in a more straightforward step by step order. The opium poppy plant has a seed pod that produces an opioid substance. When that substance is dried out, you can extract morphine from it. Heroin is then made out of the morphine through a chemical process. Therefore, this entire process results in creating an opioid called heroin that is an illegal drug. Above all, heroin is not legal and should not be used for medical purposes.

Heroin is a severely addictive drug that comes in different forms. It can be a white powder, a brown powder, or a ‘black tar’ sticky product. The white powder is typically pure heroin. However, some white and brown powders can be diluted or “cut” with other items, such as baking soda, starch, or sugar. Dealers also combine it with more harmful substances such as laundry detergent, rat poison, or even other drugs. Therefore, usually, the whiter the heroin is, the purer it is. However, more pure does not mean it is better. All heroin comes with a price.

Smoking, Snorting, or Injecting

Heroin in powder form can be smoked or snorted. Injecting isn’t the only way to get it into the skin. The ‘black tar’ version, by contrast, is usually injected. It is nicknamed tar due to its dark color and sticky consistency. The process of making this type of heroin is imperfect and leaves behind contaminants. It is incredibly dangerous because these contaminants create a form of impure heroin. It can be dissolved into a liquid form and injected with a needle into someone’s body.

Injecting a needle into your arm is hazardous. Trained medical professionals have to use needles for medical purposes correctly. Missing veins is common, even for them. Therefore, it is a scary concept that anyone puts a needle in their arm is trying to do so. But thousands of people do it and wrestle with the risk of a vein collapsing or infection spreading if multiple people share the needle. If you are concerned for yourself or someone you love that may be using heroin, then call us today. Our team of experts is here and wants to help you in any way we can. Call today and get the help that you need.

The Effects of Heroin

Heroin enters the body through smoking, snorting, or injection. When it enters the body, it latches on to opioid receptors. The human body naturally has opioid receptors that are called Mu, Delta, and Kappa. They are receptors on cells associated with mood, physical pain, and the operation of breathing, heart rate, and sleeping. The heroin attaches to these receptors and binds to them.

Chemical reactions occur in the brain when heroin connects to the opioid receptors. The brain floods with pleasure so intense it provides a feeling of euphoria. The drug is appealing to individuals who struggle with anxiety, depression, or unsafe surroundings. This appeal is because the drug can produce false sensations of security and comfort. When the drug wears off, the person’s original feeling of ‘lowness’ returns with more intensity, thus creating an emotional rebound effect that will intensify over time. However, this is one reason it is extraordinarily hard to quit heroin. It is heartbreaking and becomes an endless cycle of torture for the individual.

Tolerance and Addiction

Heroin classifies as a Controlled Substances Act ‘Schedule I.’ This means that the substance is at a high risk of being abused, and therefore its production must be regulated under the law. Heroin is illegal and is not for medical treatment.

If you need more information about the tolerance and addiction that associates with heroin addiction, then call us today. We will equip you will all of the information that you need to start a healthy life today.

Tolerance

Overcoming heroin addiction is so difficult because of the tolerance your body can build up. Whether injecting or snorting the drug into the body, it rapidly enters the brain. That instant euphoric blissful feeling is chemically created. However, the exhilaration will only feel that intense the first few times it is used. Like all things, our body adapts.

Our bodies can build up a tolerance to just about anything. Let’s use coffee as an example. If you start to drink a coffee cup in the morning every day for a month, your body will adapt to it. Your body will want more coffee, and your tolerance will rise. If you dramatically stop drinking coffee, your body will have a caffeine withdrawal and most likely produce a headache. Heroin works in the same way, but on a far more severe level. The more heroin you take, the more your body builds up a tolerance, and the higher your patience, the more heroin you need to take to feel good.

Addiction

Tolerance causes the doses you take to increase, as you chase the euphoric feeling you felt the first time. Thus, over a long time, you develop an addiction to heroin. If you suddenly try to stop using heroin, as if you tried to stop drinking coffee, you will go through withdrawal.

Withdrawal reactions can include:

muscle pain
panic
insomnia
vomiting

The craving becomes quite overpowering. Thus, you cannot be accountable anymore because your choices have practically been taken away from you, making it nearly impossible to stop without professional help. Do not despair! There is no single playbook for how to beat heroin addiction, but many remedies can help you win your battle. Reliable centers of treatment for heroin addiction can provide medication like methadone or buprenorphine that will start to contradict the heroine effects. Alongside these methods, psychosocial therapies will also be part of the treatment to bring your brain back to a healthier state.

If you are in this situation, there is hope! Battling heroin addiction cannot be accomplished alone because of the changes that occurred in your brain. But treatment for heroin addiction begins with guidance and a safe environment, and our professionals can help you find just that.

The Short-Term Effects of Heroin Use

Those who have been using heroin regularly, then probably have started to notice some side effects. Despite the euphoric feeling that heroin can cause, it isn’t healthy, safe, or natural. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, short term effects on the mind can include the muddled mental function and unintentional transitions between states of consciousness.

The effects on the body from heroin are just as scary. After consistent use, the individual can experience their mouth being severely dry. The lack of saliva can cause lips to crack, sores to form, difficulty with speech, and even difficulty swallowing due to the tongue’s dryness. Your skin will become itchy and warm, and heaviness will drape over you. Your arms and legs will feel heavier than usual. And finally, nausea can occur to the point of vomiting. A user doesn’t have to take heroin every day to feel these effects. If heroin is entering the body multiple times a week, then that is all it takes.

If this is where you are now, it is scary. You may feel that you don’t know what to do. It isn’t your fault. You can still choose to stop and seek guidance. If you see a family member or friend who is struggling with heroin, reach out to them. Offer them this knowledge and the opportunity to seek treatment for heroin addiction. Call us today if you need assistance with getting guidance for yourself or a friend or family member.

The Long-Term Effects of Heroin Use

If you, a friend, or a family member continue to take heroin daily, there will be severe long-term side effects. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, when injecting heroin, veins can collapse and block blood flow over time. Inhaling the drug through sniffing or snorting can cause the tissue inside the nose to be damaged.

Heroin can also cause:

cramps in the stomach
constipation
infections
mental disorders

The heart has a sac lining attached to the heart muscle: this can become infected along with the heart valves. Then the bacteria from these infections can create abscesses. Abscesses are pockets of tissue full of pus. The risk of kidney and liver disease is also high, and complications in the lungs, such as labored breathing and even pneumonia. Mental disorders can develop in the individual after excessive use, including Antisocial Personality Disorder and depression. All this is possible, regardless of whether the individual was experiencing depression symptoms before developing a drug habit.

Finally, long-term heroin use causes hormonal changes, resulting in irregular menstrual cycles for women and erectile dysfunction for men. Keep in mind that the short-term effects of dry mouth can still consistently be occurring along with all of these long-term effects.

It is never too late to fix these effects. It might take time, but healing is still possible. You have people who care about you. You have a family and friends who worry about you but do not know how to help. If you have experienced all of these reactions, it is time to seek treatment for heroin addiction. Call us today and we can provide you with treatment options suited best for you and your situation.

An Opioid Crisis

Heroin is part of the opioid crisis. If you are unfamiliar, the opioid crisis occurred because doctors got into the habit of overprescribing opioid painkillers and effectively got many of their patients hooked. This crisis was happening near the end of the 1990s. As a result of pharmaceutical companies swearing their pain relievers couldn’t be addictive, healthcare providers were comfortable recommending them. Over time these opioid pain relievers were extraordinarily addictive, and users were misusing them.

Are you or someone you love struggling with opioid addiction? Then call us today. We will be able to provide you with the proper treatment options that best fit you and your needs.

Heroin is Not Medication

Heroin is not a medication, but it is an opioid. An opioid that you might be more familiar with is Vicodin or codeine. These are examples of some of the prescriptions to patients without substance control take. Their use was for chronic pain from injuries or surgeries. If someone became addicted, they had to ask their doctor for another prescription, and they would receive it.

According to the American College of Physicians Medical Journal, today, roughly 60,000 to 120,000 people are addicted to an opioid in the United States. Most of them started with a legal prescription and then began taking higher doses for a more extended period than their doctors intended. There is a reason our specialists call it a crisis. The addiction to theses pain killers was never the patient’s fault.

Soon heroin and opioid pain killers became connected. Statistics show that 80 percent of people who did heroin first would then misuse prescription drugs. And roughly five percent of people who have an addiction to prescription drugs first would use heroin. People began to chase that ‘high,’ that feeling of being on cloud 9. As tolerance builds, soon, the opioid or heroin will never be enough to satisfy. Sadly, the amount used will keep rising, and without help, the person will overdose.

Overdose

Thousands of people die from overdoses every year. According to the NIDA, data from 2018 estimates about 128 people will die from an opioid overdose every day in the United States. To put this in perspective, an estimated 46,720 people die from opioids in a year. This statistic doesn’t have to include you. Don’t become part of a statistic. It isn’t too late.
An amount of the drug causes an overdose from heroin is too much for the body to handle. Heart rate begins to decrease, and breathing becomes too shallow. Above all, the individual will cease to breathe on their own and not survive without medical help. You don’t want to let it get to that point. Don’t let this be you, because there is always a way to fight. Call us today and start on the path to healing.

Written by Julia Bashaw

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