Opiate Withdrawal

Opiate Withdrawal – General Information

Opiate Withdrawal – Symptoms

Opiate Withdrawal – Treatment

In the treatment of Opiate Withdrawal, medications and supportive care are the main characteristics. Clonidine is the most commonly used drug, and reduces any physical symptoms. Because it is used to treat hypertension, the medicine lowers blood pressure, and decreases the levels of some chemicals in your blood. This medication make your heart beat easily and slowly, allowing blood vessels to relax. Clonidine has also side effects and if you encounter any effect listed, seeks emergency medical attention: difficulty in breathing, swelling of your lips or face, high blood pressure, and even a very slow heart rate.
Another detoxification method is to use a slowly, reduced over time, dose of methadone, also to reduce the symptoms of the disease. Methadone is a narcotic pain reliever, and it is similar to morphine. Methadone works also in people addicted to heroin or other narcotic drugs without causing the manifestation associated with the drug addiction. If the medicine is taken improperly, it will increase the risk of serious side effects or even death. Another medication, considered new, it is more effective then other medications for treating Opiate Withdrawal. The medicine is called Buprenorphine, and can shorten the length of detoxification. It can be used also as long term maintenance, like methadone. In the treatment of Opiate Withdrawal, are included also drug treatment programs, and are widely advertised treatments, and are called detoxification under anesthesia. The program involves anesthetizing the patient and injecting large doses of blocking drugs, to speed up the transition to a normal opioid system function. These programs are not fully trustworthy of success, because there are cases in the time spent suffering with the disease is not reduced at all, or they reduced only the intensity of the symptoms. That’s why there are a few deaths in which the procedure was applied, especially if it was performed outside a medical surveillance.

There is also another risk in using this procedure, because Opiate Withdrawal provokes vomiting, and during anesthesia, this increases the death risk, and it is considered that it has few potential benefits. There are some emergency methods to prevent the death of the patient. The patient will be given, intravenously, an antidote for the opioid, called nalaxone (Narcan). This is a substance which have really effective and good results in all patients suffering of Opiate Withdrawal, because blocks the receptors in the brain for opioid so that the overdose is reversed. Even if the overdose does not receive any medical services, this only drug can save him or her from dying. Commonly prescribed methadone or illicit heroin by pregnant women can result in a withdrawal syndrome in their newborn children, and cause disruption of the mother infant relationship, sleeping difficulties, feeding difficulties, weight loss and seizures. The are treatments for newborn infants, like phenobarbitone or diazepam, which reduce symptoms and reduce complications, and also supportive treatments like swaddling, settling, massage, relaxation baths, pacifiers. But if these programs really work and represent a rescue for many of the addictive persons is still an important question that has not found answer yet.