To date, opiates offer the best and most effective treatment for pain-related conditions. While these drugs come in both prescription and illegal forms, addiction rates for prescription medications are no less prevalent than those for illegal opiate drugs. Once people become addicted, opiate withdrawal treatment offers the very best chance of ever living a drug-free life.

Detox Programs

An opiate addiction casts a far-reaching net of effects across a person’s life. These effects impair his or her ability to function normally, both in the short-term and the long-term. Even after a person has been in opiate withdrawal treatment for months at a time, opiates’ effects on the mind and body continue to challenge a person’s will to live drug-free.

Opiate withdrawal treatment starts with detoxification or weaning the body off the effects of the drug. Much of the difficulty in getting off opiates has to do with the distressing withdrawal effects or symptoms that result when the body is denied the drug.

Opiate addiction treatment will help you cope with and overcome withdrawal!

Withdrawal effects can take the form of:

• Chills
• Tremors
• Nausea, vomiting
• Fatigue
• Restlessness
• Irritability
• Depression
• Anxiety

While withdrawal effects can cause considerable pain and distress, these symptoms represent the body’s repair processes at work. For people suffering from severe addictions, this repair process can take years before a person starts to feel normal again.

Opiate withdrawal treatment detox programs can help alleviate much of the drug’s withdrawal effects using medication therapies. According to the University of California-Irvine School of Medicine’s resource site, medication therapies help relieve withdrawal symptoms while helping to reduce a person’s drug cravings. During this time, recovering addicts can work on the psychological aspects of addiction through psychotherapy and 12-step support group work.

Inpatient Programs

Inpatient programs function as live-in facilities where recovering addicts receive 24-hour monitoring and support. Program durations can range anywhere from 28 days to 12 months depending on the severity of a person’s addiction. Participants engage in ongoing psychotherapy treatment, group counseling and 12-step program meetings on a daily basis.

For many recovering addicts, withdrawal effects persist for months, and even years, after receiving detox care. For this reason, inpatient opiate withdrawal treatment programs include medication therapies as part of a person’s overall treatment plan. Medication therapies administer precise doses of non-addictive, opiate-type drug treatments designed to help recovering addicts abstain from using. Because of the damaging effects of long-term opiate abuse, many people simply cannot make it through recovery without receiving some form of opiate-type medication treatment to help relieve withdrawal effects.

Intensive Outpatient Programs

Someone seeking treatment during the early stages of addiction may be able to benefit from an intensive outpatient program from the start. People who’ve managed to maintain employment in spite of a growing addiction or people with ongoing family obligations may require the added freedom outpatient programs allow. Instead of living at the treatment facility, participants receive opiate withdrawal treatment on a pre-scheduled basis.

Much like the services provided by inpatient programs, participants engage in psychotherapy, group therapy work and 12-step recovery programs.  Intensive outpatient opiate withdrawal treatment programs also offer ongoing medication therapies depending on a person’s treatment needs.