Detoxification is the period when drugs and alcohol leave your body. This process is a difficult and emotionally intense experience. After using drugs or alcohol for a prolonged period, your body and brain are used to certain levels of them in your system. When you taper or discontinue these substances, withdrawal symptoms occur. The detox process aims to get you through the withdrawal period while minimising withdrawal symptoms, keeping you as safe and supported as possible. Detoxification can be attempted alone, but a medically supervised detox is the safest method, with a greater chance of success………Continue reading…
Source: UK Rehab
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Certain opioid medications such as methadone and more buprenorphine are widely used to treat addiction and dependence on other opioids such as heroin, morphine or oxycodone. Methadone and buprenorphine are maintenance therapies intended to reduce cravings for opioids, thereby reducing illegal drug use, and the risks associated with it, such as disease, arrest, incarceration, and death, in line with the philosophy of harm reduction.
Both drugs may be used as maintenance medications (taken for an indefinite period of time), or used as detoxification aids. All available studies collected in the 2005 Australian National Evaluation of Pharmacotherapies for Opioid Dependence suggest that maintenance treatment is preferable, with very high rates (79–100%) of relapse within three months of detoxification from levo-α-acetylmethadol (LAAM), buprenorphine, and methadone.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), patients stabilized on adequate, sustained doses of methadone or buprenorphine can keep their jobs, avoid crime and violence, and reduce their exposure to HIV and Hepatitis C by stopping or reducing injection drug use and drug-related high risk sexual behavior.
Naltrexone is a long-acting opioid antagonist with few side effects. It is usually prescribed in outpatient medical conditions. Naltrexone blocks the euphoric effects of alcohol and opioids. Naltrexone cuts relapse risk in the first three months by about 36%. However, it is far less effective in helping patients maintain abstinence or retaining them in the drug-treatment system (retention rates average 12% at 90 days for naltrexone, average 57% at 90 days for buprenorphine, average 61% at 90 days for methadone).
Alcohol detoxification is a process by which a heavy drinker’s system is brought back to normal after being habituated to having alcohol in the body continuously for an extended period of substance abuse. Serious alcohol addiction results in a downregulation of GABA neurotransmitter receptors. Precipitous withdrawal from long-term alcohol addiction without medical management can cause severe health problems and can be fatal.
Alcohol detox is not a treatment for alcoholism. After detoxification, other treatments must be undertaken to deal with the underlying addiction that caused alcohol use. Clinicians use drug detoxification to reduce or relieve withdrawal symptoms while helping an addicted person adjust to living without drug use. Drug detoxification does not aim to treat addiction but rather represents an early step within long-term treatment.
Detoxification may be achieved drug-free or may use medications as an aspect of treatment. Often drug detoxification and treatment will occur in a community program that lasts several months and takes place in a residential setting rather than in a medical center. Drug detoxification varies depending on the location of treatment, but most detox centers provide treatment to avoid the symptoms of physical withdrawal from alcohol and from other drugs.
Most also incorporate counseling and therapy during detox to help with the consequences of withdrawal. An animal’s metabolism can produce harmful substances which it can then make less toxic through reduction, oxidation (collectively known as redox reactions), conjugation and excretion of molecules from cells or tissues. This is called xenobiotic metabolism.
Enzymes that are important in detoxification metabolism include cytochrome P450 oxidases, UDP-glucuronosyltransferases, and glutathione S-transferases. These processes are particularly well-studied as part of drug metabolism, as they influence the pharmacokinetics of a drug in the body. Certain approaches in alternative medicine claim to remove alleged “toxins” from the body through herbal, electrical, electromagnetic or other treatments.
These toxins may not be linked to symptoms and treatments have no scientific evidence, making the validity of such techniques questionable. There is little evidence for toxic accumulation in these cases, as the liver and kidneys automatically detoxify and excrete many toxic materials including metabolic wastes. Under this theory, if toxins are too rapidly released without being safely eliminated (such as when metabolizing fat that stores toxins), they can damage the body and cause malaise.
Such alternative therapies include contrast showers, detoxification foot pads, oil pulling, Gerson therapy, snake-stones, body cleansing, Scientology’s and Narconon’s Purification Rundown, water fasting, and metabolic therapy.
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