Abdel Fahmy asked:


As I have mentioned in several of my previous articles, addiction to opiates is chronic disease of the brain and should be managed as such. It is usually the result of a combination of by genetic, psychosocial and environmental factors that ultimately lead to the development of this relapsing disease. Now that we agree that it is a disease shouldnt we treat it as such?

Unfortunately, although many of the professionals working in the addiction field agree with this fact they still adopt of the mind set of our great grandfathers who looked down on those patients and considered addiction as an immoral sin and that addicts should repent. Some of the drug treatment programs are resistant to prescribing medications indicated for addiction treatment, rather, they place those patients in what looks like a lock down atmosphere and strip them of their ability to make decisions or communicate with certain people. While this approach may be needed in some cases to avoid external influences on patients as the facility implement their treatment protocols, it should not be generalized. Moreover, patients would be more receptive to the counseling efforts implemented in those facilities if they were comfortable and not suffering from the sever pains and aches associated with withdrawals from opiates.

What do you think will happen once those patients are released back into the society where all the triggers associated with addiction reside? Also have you ever seen a diabetic who is not very compliant with their doctors recommendations placed in a diabetic rehab? Treatment should be individualized and as recovery moves forward patients should gradually be empowered to take control of their life in order to eventually become productive members of the society.

In contrast, the outpatient programs using Buprenorphine, implement an approach which deals with addiction as a chronic relapsing disease that needs medical treatment in the form of medications in addition to psychosocial rehabilitation. While being on Buprenorphine, patients are relieved from the dreadful symptoms of withdrawals and cravings. This helps patients develop the interest and passion to participate in their rehabilitation process and makes the education efforts on our parts much easier.

The stigma imposed by our society on patient suffering from addiction has a profound negative impact on the recovery process. We hope that through education, research and solid evidence the medical community would be able to change the views and beliefs of the society and some of the professionals in order to provide the best treatment approach to our patients.



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Todd Lange asked:


When you are considering options for heroin addiction treatment in Tennessee, you have to know that you cannot use the usual approaches that go with searching options for other addiction treatments. The main reason behind this is that heroin is an opiate, a drug that acts in a very different manner on the human body. For this reason, treating heroin addiction also becomes quite a different issue.

There are special treatment centers that are dedicated to heroin addiction treatment in Tennessee. When looking for options on heroin treatment, you have to consider these treatment centers. However, you have to make sure of several other points too.

One of the first things that you have to consider here is that the treatment center must be really dedicated to heroin treatment. It is justified to reiterate the point that heroin addiction cannot be handled by a normal treatment center. Let’s take a look at the manner in which a heroin addiction works to understand this better.

When a person consumes heroin, the substance attacks specific regions in the central nervous system and makes the brain secrete the substance known as dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for the sense of pleasure that the person experiences. As long as the person consumes heroin, this substance is released and the person feels the euphoric sense of pleasure that is so well-associated with the heroin addiction. However, as the person consumes more and more of heroin, the brain gets immune to it and the secretion of dopamine dwindles. When that happens, the patient is no longer able to feel the same high as he or she experience with heroin before. This is the time when the patient considers taking in more of the substance.

This is why heroin users will soon begin consuming higher amounts of heroin than they did earlier. This can happen quite fast, depending on the physical and the mental constitution of the patient. Over time, the patient might start using perilously high amounts of heroin. But though the brain asks for more of heroin, the body may not be able to support it. This is where tragedies such as heroin overdose deaths can happen.

Understanding how heroin works on the human system is vitally important when you are deciding a treatment option for the substance because the way the treatment works depends on it. You have to ensure that the center for heroin addiction treatment in Tennessee you are considering is capable to deal with the way heroin functions in the body.

Heroin treatment is difficult because of the way it attacks the central nervous system and makes it feel that it cannot persist without the substance in the body. That is the reason you have to check up on the expertise the treatment center has in handling heroin addiction treatment. You have to make sure that the center really has a license for conducting heroin addiction treatment in Tennessee. Also check the credentials of the treatment providers if you can. They must ideally be certified through a center such as the American Society of Addiction Medicine and must have an experience in providing heroin addiction treatment to people in the past.

Another thing that you will have to educate yourself on is the two kinds of treatments that are used to treat a heroin dependency in the state. Since about 30 years now, methadone has been the drug of choice for the treatment of heroin. This substance is an opiate just like heroin is and when it is provided in the form of a maintenance medication therapy, it can reduce the urge the person has for heroin. However, it is a highly addictive drug in itself, and must be provided in an inpatient treatment format with constant medical supervision. It must never be stopped abruptly, because that could cause a withdrawal too.

On the other hand, there’s buprenorphine, a relatively new method of treatment, which has been only recently approved for addiction treatment in Tennessee. People are favoring buprenorphine recently because it can be provided in an outpatient format, it is not as addictive as methadone (though it is an opiate too), it can be easily worked out from the system and it does not react fatally with some other prescription drugs that the person might be taking.

You need to check whether you would like to go ahead with a methadone treatment or a buprenorphine treatment. Read about these on the Internet and ask a counselor for substance abuse treatment in Tennessee about which treatment program you should go ahead with.



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