Healing Begins Here
What Factors Influence the Heroin Withdrawal Timeline?
Your medical background plays an intricate part in how your body responds to treatment and heroin withdrawals. Correlatively, this is why exhibiting complete transparency with our specialists regarding your medical history and background is so vital. We coordinate closely with your primary care physician to ensure the most personalized, effective recovery path for your specific circumstances.
How long you’ve been abusing drugs is a primary indicator of withdrawal duration. For example, if you have an extended history of heroin use, withdrawal symptoms may persist for a longer duration. This does not necessarily mean symptoms will be more severe. Your treatment may simply require more time to mentally and physically recover properly.
Your body’s level of dependency is another main component in determining the onset duration of your withdrawal symptoms. Regardless of how long you’ve used heroin, addiction severity is different for everyone. Just because you have an extended drug history doesn’t mean you have a greater addiction severity, though it increases the likelihood. Many individuals with a shorter history of substance use have formed more severe dependence. Again, it all depends on how your mind and body react to the drug in your system.
The same way everyone’s body responds differently to different drugs is the same way everyone’s body reacts differently to treatment. Some may respond better than others based on your treatment assessment. This is why our unrivaled therapy team specializes in accurate assessment and making the necessary mid-treatment modifications. One way or another, we make certain you have the most comfortable circumstances and most effective tools at your disposal.
What are Acute Heroin Withdrawal Symptoms?
Watery eyes, runny nose, and other sinus discomforts are a common reaction to the initial phase of acute withdrawal. Other sinus effects can include sore or dry throat, head congestion, or other sinus-related withdrawal reactions. These symptoms can mimic the same elements of a sinus infection, ranging from moderate to severe, based on bodily reactions.
Stomach pain and discomfort are common signs of acute withdrawal. Additional gastrointestinal-related withdrawal symptoms include diarrhea, constipation, and acid reflux. Thankfully, these, and most other symptoms listed, can usually be abated by medication-assisted treatment prescriptions directed by a therapeutic professional.
Sleep disturbances, especially to an extreme extent, are a primary heroin withdrawal symptom. To elaborate, people with a heroin addiction are likely to experience some form of difficulty sleeping or staying asleep. Such insomnia bouts take a collective toll on mental and physical health, leading many to relapse simply to alleviate symptoms. Our variety of approved sleep medication aids makes eliminating heroin a bearable and enjoyable experience.
Most people who quit taking heroin will experience muscle and body aches in some form. The severity of these body aches is often dependent on your level of dependency. This is your body and mind craving the absence of heroin’s chemical compounds. It therefore manifests itself in painful aches and pains that can occur anywhere throughout the body.
The absence of an addictive chemical compound can elevate body temperature. This temperature increase, therefore, induces cold or hot sweats that can persist for extended periods. If not tended to properly, this will result in severe dehydration and other uncomfortable symptoms. The only way to alleviate this symptom in a healthy manner is to take natural supplements or implement training techniques from your therapist.
What are the Long-Term Withdrawal Symptoms of Heroin?
This is deeper than simply feeling depressed. This is an utter absence of all emotions entirely. This occurs when your body has been so severely depleted of serotonin and other hormones that you become emotionally detached. This is dangerous because the individual suffering from this long-term withdrawal won’t care about much of anything. This puts them in danger of making rash, non-thought-out decisions that can induce self-harm.
Cognitive corruption can get worse before it gets better for individuals who are quitting heroin. This is because the hormonal and mental stabilization process is forced to overcompensate without the acquired source of dependency. Therefore, sharp declines in cognitive attentiveness are not uncommon before these neuronal frequencies are restored to their natural capabilities.
Severe sadness or depression for no apparent reason is indicative of a long-term withdrawal side-effect of heroin. This is why heroin use is connected with not just depression, but for the cause of a wide array of mental illnesses. Personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and depressive disorders can all be potentially induced by heroin use.
Heroin withdrawals seep the energy out of you just as much as heroin use. However, these effects are more short-term compared to the long-term health consequences of drug use. Heroin withdrawals make you feel incapable of getting out of bed or cause you to sleep for unusually long periods. This can make it extremely difficult to muster the motivation to fend off relapse temptations.
How to Quit Heroin
This is not as simple as you may think, as many individuals skip this key, attempting to self-cessate. This is not only dangerous depending on the body’s developed dependency, but it’s also the greatest accelerant of relapse. Doing it alone makes quitting heroin feel impossible. However, our addiction treatment programs make everything possible, opening your eyes to the realities of achievable sobriety.
It’s easy to get distracted by life’s occurrences and influences. That’s why it’s important to keep your sobriety goals at the forefront of your mind at all times through recovery. Our dedicated team helps you maintain this focus at every phase of rehab so you never let your guard down. This focused maintenance eventually becomes an instilled part of your thought process that never leaves you.
No sobriety is achieved without a strong support group. That’s why Crestview Recovery stresses the importance of a support structure in all of our addiction treatment. A strong support group consists of your closest friends, family, and therapists you trust, who make up the backbone of a fail-safe relapse prevention support team. If you need help formulating and implementing solid support structures, our group therapy programs are a great place to start.
It takes keeping your guard up every day to maintain independent sobriety, especially after completing rehab. Some people make the mistake in accomplishing sobriety and lowering their guard, allowing relapse temptations to permeate. That’s precisely why we initiate thorough aftercare programs to make sure you sustain the progress you’ve achieved.
Arguably, the most difficult obstacle to sobriety involves removing negative influences in recovery that encourage addiction. It can be nearly equally difficult to find friends who encourage sobriety when you’ve spent so long in addiction-fueling environments. Crestview Recovery thrives in not only providing positive sober friends but also introducing you to lifelong bonds you’ll treasure forever.
