Drug and Alcohol Detox

Detoxification for drug or alcohol abuse is the first, necessary step toward recovery. Many people balk at this step. Why? Because it is accompanied by withdrawal, the unpleasantness associated with stoppage of the drugs or alcohol the body has learned to crave and is, in fact, dependent upon. The nausea, anxiety, sweating, mood swings, shakiness, heart palpitations, and other physical symptoms that go with withdrawal can be so intense that most addicts lose their determination quickly without help and flee straight back to the bottle and the pills.

It doesn’t have to be like that.

Detoxification, or “detox” for drug and alcohol abuse is a managed process nowadays. Medical science has learned how to give the body what it needs in the week or so required to flush the actual drugs or alcohol toxins out of an addict’s system. Many times, addiction is mild enough that it can be managed on an outpatient basis, through a carefully managed course of substitute drugs, usually benzodiazepines, which mimic the effects of heroin or cocaine or synthetic opiates on the brain, without the destructive side effects. Detoxification weans the individual off the addictive substance under close medical supervision that also treats any other conditions caused by the addiction.

There are many forms of drug and alcohol detoxification, sometimes involving a hospital stay to manage pain and heal a debilitated body, sometimes involving a course of pills taken as an outpatient. Rapid detox is done under anesthesia, and the patient wakes up drug-free and ready to begin the much longer process of addressing the emotional aspects of the addiction. However it is managed, it must be undertaken in order to start the recovery process.

Detoxification, whether on an inpatient or outpatient basis, is crucial to real, long-term recovery. Once free of the actual presence of the drugs or alcohol, a recovering addict is free to focus on the other parts of the addiction, the things that contributed to it, that made pills or alcohol an acceptable alternative to other means of solving problems. Freed from the endless haze created by the drug, it sets the stage to begin reclaiming the life that once you had, and moving forward to the one you want.