Addiction treatments
No treatment approach can guarantee success. Different things work for different people and there is a high relapse/failure rate for all treatments. Sometimes the same treatment can have different effects on the same person at different times.Treatment has a far wider impact than just on the person with dependency. Children settle down at school as a parent returns to his normal self, truancy and petty crime fall both often expressions of distress at home. Marriages recover, friendships and relationships with neighbours are restored. Other risks are reduced. For example, a major concern has been that the sexual partners of drug users may be exposed to HIV if the users are carriers.
An important issue in the treatment of addiction is the distinction between harm reduction and total abstinence.
- Harm reduction is where addicts are allowed to continue taking opiates under controlled conditions in order to keep them away from the black market and harmful criminal influences.
- Total abstinence (also known as ‘prohibitionism’ or ‘zero tolerance’) is where the aim is to keep all people completely off drugs - no drug use at all is justified.
It is important to recognise that formal intervention is not the only way to deal with addiction. The fact is that the many people control or stop without any outside professional help at all. Some do this by monitoring their consumption and its effects; others respond to and are helped by comments about the nature and extent of their problem from a spouse, a colleague or supervisor, a neighbour, or a friend; and yet others move in and out of addiction problems over their life span - due to, for example, altering lifestyles, varying levels of stress, and changing patterns of interaction with different social or work groups.
For a substantial minority, however, some sort of formal help is useful.
Medical Help
This is usually in the form of medically prescribed drugs, often at least initially as part of inpatient care, and sometimes as part of a treatment plan.Pharmocotherapy is the use of drugs in the treatment of addiction. There is often confusion between detoxification and rehabilitation.
Detox will simply remove the physical craving associated with withdrawal from opiates, whereas rehabilitation is the full recovery of an addict to the stage where they no longer wish to abuse the substance, (usually the process after the detox stage).
Alcohol
The two main types of drug are Antabuse and Heminevrin.- Antabuse (Disulfiram): This is a drug that has no effect unless someone consumes alcohol, whereupon it has very unpleasant effects. Its major drawbacks are that a client can easily stop taking the drug when he or she ‘decides’ to have a relapse; and it can be counter-therapeutic in that it reinforces clients’ beliefs that they cannot control themselves without external means.
- Heminevrin:This is a barbiturate used to reduce severe withdrawal effects from alcohol. Its major drawbacks are that it is very easy to become dependent upon, and hence many clients can simply switch dependencies; and clients may use alcohol and Heminevrin together, which is dangerous due to the ease of fatal overdose.
Heroin Treatments
- Ibogaine: is not a substitute for narcotics or stimulants, is not addicting and is given in a single administration modality (SAM). It is a chemical dependence interrupter. Re-treatment may occasionally be needed until the person being treated with Ibogaine is able to extinguish certain conditioned responses related to drug abuse.
- Apomorphine Treatment
- Endorphine Treatment: Administering endorphine attempts to balance the destruction done by opiate abuse
- Morphine / Legal heroin Treatment: Morphine/heroin treatment is used primarily to stabilise the addict and allow them to participate in a relatively normal existence. There are few countries in the world that subscribe to the idea that by supplying addicts with their drug of choice that they are able to make valuable citizens from read more
