Vicodin addiction RECOVERY:
Before discussing the specifics of treatment and recovery, it may be worthwhile to make a distinction between two often-confused terms: addiction and dependency.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse defines addiction as “a complex brain disease, characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences.” Physical dependence, on the other hand, is “a state in which the body adapts to the presence of the drug. This can include tolerance, which means that the user must take higher doses to achieve the same initial drug effect. Withdrawal symptoms may occur when a user abruptly stops taking the drug. Although people who are addicted to a variety of drugs often experience tolerance and withdrawal symptoms, physical dependence alone is not the same as addiction.”
The chief characteristic of addiction is the presence of cravings: wanting or needing the drug, even when there is no therapeutic purpose for its use. Cravings are a result of both a psychological and biological addiction: the user believes that he or she will suffer pain without access to the drug, while the body feels different without the drug present. To return to stasis, the addict craves the drug to achieve the familiar feeling and act in accordance with the belief that the drug will eliminate pain.
Treatments for narcotic addiction fall into two main categories: behavioral and pharmacological.
Behavioral treatment for addiction is intended to teach patients how to stop using drugs, how to manage cravings, how to prevent a relapse and how to respond to a relapse if one should occur. These skills and techniques are taught in the context of a program that includes one-on-one counseling, group therapy, and the modeling of appropriate abstinent behavior in a supportive environment.
The addict is usually introduced to the 12 Step model as a tool to maintain drug abstinence during the course of treatment, and is encouraged to continue participating in local, non-professional groups such as Narcotics Anonymous after discharge.
This is the most well known form of drug abuse treatment, practiced at thousand of treatment programs across the country.
Pharmacological treatment incorporates medications that block the effect of opiates on the brain. Naltrexone was developed to counteract opium overdose symptoms, and has had some success in treating addiction. Methadone is a synthetic opiate that has been used to treat heroin addicts since the 1970s. Its chief benefits include its ability to eliminate withdrawal symptoms and relieve drug craving. Like Naltrexone and a newer medication, Buprenorphine, it blocks Vicodin and other opiates from completing the neural connections that would otherwise produce feelings of euphoria.
In October 2002, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Buprenorphine as an "aversion therapy" that can be administered in a doctor's office. The treatment lasts for several weeks and has few side effects (such as respiratory problems, which are more common with Naltrexone and Methadone).
None of these pharmacological treatments is intended to relieve the addict's psychological dependency on Vicodin; they simply inhibit addict from getting high.
Most physicians in the drug treatment field recommend a combination of both behavioral and pharmacological methods. In addition, it may be necessary for the addict to undergo detoxification-widely referred to as "detox"-to purge the body of the effects of Vicodin abuse (such as liver toxicity), in order for the patient to actively and consciously participate in his or her own recovery process.
To learn more about treatment and recovery from Vicodin and other opiates, contact us today at (800) 224-1850. You can begin building a new future for yourself and your loved ones today. Please call.