Help for heroin addiction

Help for heroin addiction includes medications, detox, and counseling. Where to find help for heroin addiction? We tell you here.

4
minute read

If you know anything about how heroin works, you know that it is highly addictive.  There are several ways you or a loved one can find help for heroin addiction. But where does one start on the path to helping heroin addiction?

Here, we look at the different ways you can get help for heroin addiction and where to look.   First, it’s important to know what is withdrawal from heroin like,  what are heroin withdrawal symptoms like, and which medications can help.  Then, learn more about behavioral interventions to prevent relapse.  If you still have questions about help for heroin addiction, please ask them in the comments sections below.

How to help heroin addiction

1. Pharmaceutical interventions for heroin addiction

More and more research is going into how to treat opiate addiction to substances such as heroin. Specifically, pharmacological supports which aim to promote successful recoveries from heroin addiction have been targeted, both in and out of treatment programs as well as researched during incarceration. Methadone has been a popular alternative treatment for heroin addiction in the past, but research is finding that methadone maintenance programs are less successful and that people often become addicted to methadone. In 2002, buprenorphine was approved by the FDA to help treat heroin addiction and has shown success in not only detoxification but as a relapse prevention tool. Buprenorphine can now be offered and regulated in the doctor’s office. Heroin also alters the brain chemistry in such a way that SSRIs or other medications for mental conditions may be needed into order to maintain recovery.

2. Mental health treatments for heroin addiction

The other main way to treat and help heroin addiction is by addressing the mental and psychological aspects of addiction. Addiction is one part physical and one part psychological. While heroin does have a strong physical control over the body, an unhealthy psychological state doesn’t make it any easier to stop using heroin. If you can learn, understand and change the reasons WHY you use heroin, you can be more successful in living a drug-free life. There are so many treatment modalities out there that can help: heroin rehab or treatment facilities, support groups, and psychotherapy can all help treat heroin addiction.

Getting help for heroin addiction

It is really important to get help for heroin addiction. The more you use heroin, the more you increases chances of overdose, death, and potential jail time. Getting help for heroin addiction may be as simple as asking a friend or family member to help. Or you may need to spend time learning about addiction treatment centers in your town or state. There are several outpatient behavioral programs that can help you get started or find ways to treat addiction. Many times parole or probation mandates these helps for addiction and can be effective in overall treatment of heroin.

How to help a heroin addict

If you know someone who is using heroin, it affects lives so drastically that an intervention may be needed. Find a way to get them into a treatment facility so that they are away from their known environment. This way they can get clean without having to worry about jail time or the contributing factors of heroin addiction. Call a local treatment center or seek a professional interventionist for more information.

It is also important for people who know a heroin addict to understandtheir relationship to addiction and the role they play in relapse and recovery. Sometimes people are addicted to the addict and their behaviors. But many loved ones unknowingly contribute to the relationship of addiction and enable users to continue using drugs. Through their actions, they let heroin addicts think their behavior is normal.Having firm boundaries can be helpful in forcing the addict to look at their behavior and think about seeking treatment. Seeking help from support groups like Al-Anon or Nar-anon can be a way to help an addict. Or asking for help from a family counselor or addiction therapist can also help.

Heroin addiction help and helplines

It can be overwhelming to find help for heroin addiction. One place you can contact that everyone in the country has access to is: 1-800-662-HELP (4357). This 24 hour call center not only gets you in touch with a treatment specialist but can refer you to detox and rehab centers able to treat for heroin addiction. This national drug abuse hotline can get you in contact with treatment facilities, detox centers, psychologist, and social workers. The service can condense the many hours of searching to a few simple steps. The SAMHSA treatment locator is also a great site you can look up that can help you specify a search by city and state.

Help with Heroin addiction questions

Still have questions about help with heroin addiction? Please, leave us your questions below we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Reference Sources: NIH: Heroin Addiction facts
National Institute of Drug Abuse: Heroin Treatment
NCJRS: Addiction
About the author
Lee Weber is a published author, medical writer, and woman in long-term recovery from addiction. Her latest book, The Definitive Guide to Addiction Interventions is set to reach university bookstores in early 2019.
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