Drug Detox Central

Drug Detox Treatment Strategies

When you are faced with the reality of an addiction, you need to consider your options. It might sound crazy, but you do have the option of staying where you are, of staying addicted. As I’ve gone deeper into Byron Katie’s teachings, I realize that we have to embrace reality what ever its form. So if you are not ready to break your addiction cycle, well then you are not ready. That’s the reality of the situation. If you do feel ready and you’re doing this for you and not for someone else, then here are some options.

First depending on the drugs involved, of course, you might be able to handle this as a private home matter. Alcohol drug detox is nothing to fool around with, so if were talking about alcohol addiction, please seek professional guidance. Otherwise, with some planning and the help of friends and family, you may be able to detox at home. Drug detox is nothing to fool around with so if you think that you might balk, seek professional help and do a clinic detox instead. As with many things, it would be better to spend the money and do it once instead of have a half-baked experience.

Gather the OTC meds that you’ll need for the detox. You’ll need things like Malox and Advil and fluids like Gatorade and plenty of Pepto Bismol. Tell people what you are doing. Having emotional and physical support is going to make all the difference. I have a friend who did it on his own, but it was scary and I wish I had known so I could have helped. Your loved ones would want to know and help because they want you to be free of the addiction as well.

If you end up at a drug rehab detox, that’s a great option too. The medical professionals will guide you through the first part — the detox — and then seamlessly shift into the real work of learning new ways of living in the world. Group therapy, art therapy, and the like. Just taking it slow and going one day at a time is the only way to free yourself from the drugs.

Being able to stay in one place for both the initial drug addiction detox and the therapy afterward appeals to many people. Even if you are worried about insurance, don’t let that stop you. Talk with the in-take people about your fears. I bet that they can make you feel better about the money part. What matters is getting you clean.

Many churches sponsor drug detox treatment, so if you are a member of a church group, check with the leadership about that. These days most churches realize that addiction comes in all varieties and that you don’t have to be a bar brawling biker to be an addict.

If you want help in your drug detox, ask for it. Ask your friends, family, teachers and coworkers. Truly seeking help is the way to receive help. Just open yourself up to the possibilities. Getting sober is a journey and you will never be alone on that journey.

Drug Addiction Detox

There are a lot of websites out there who will tell you how to detox off drugs quickly. There are websites to show you how to beat a drug test. There are even sites devoted to home detoxing. This site is none of those things. For me it is all about recovery. It’s about sobriety — living a clean, healthy, meaningful life. You can’t do that if you are high, strung out or in between. You have to get clean, stay clean and learn to love it. When you crave sobriety in the same way you used to crave alcohol or heroin, then you are living recovery.

The first step to living that sort of life style is getting detoxed. You have to flush the drugs from your system before you can see your way to learning to live clean and sober, right? Don’t think of it as “detox”, think of it as drug addiction detox. You are detoxing from the addiction. Choosing to do a drug rehab detox is smart. You want trained professionals there to help you through this journey.

Doing the drug detox away from home, out in the world where it is visible is an important part of the recovery. You have to be open and honest about your addiction. You cannot hide the recovery like you hid your using. That makes sense right? Part of addiction help is owning it. It’s not like you need to put up a billboard or anything, but the people in your life need to know what’s happening because it is happening to them, too.

Once the drugs are out of your system, once the physical detoxification is done, the real work can begin. This is where you learn to live life in a different way. You will spend time in rehab and with family counselors learning coping skills and communication techniques. As you know a lot of addictions begin as coping issues. Another part of the detox is shedding old routines and, sadly, old friends. The people you knew when you were using can’t be in your life anymore. This is one of the harder things about recovery — replacing the social network of your old life with a new set of friends and activities. It depends on how deep down you were before, but for some people their whole lives revolved around getting and using. If that’s not there anymore, what is going to replace it?

Gay-Friendly Drug Rehab Centers

Are you gay and addicted to drugs?  Do you find that no one understands you, there is no one to talk to and nowhere to go?  Are you desperate?

There is a rehab center that services gays and straights. In fact there is more then one.

Drug rehabilitation centers offer different paths to healing.  Some offer detox services, family recovery week, holistic services, experiential therapy, recreational therapy, art therapy, relapse prevention, individual therapy, specialty groups, dual diagnosis treatment and aftercare services.

Some gay-friendly addiction rehabilitation centers accept reimbursement from major insurance providers.

Treatment centers that specialize in helping the gay, transgender, bisexual and lesbian communities may also serve the straight community.  However, they provide a gay-friendly atmosphere and such services as gay-only support groups where members can share their feelings about discrimination, homophobia, prejudice and judgment which may be difficult for them to express in other settings.  Staff at these facilities are adept and empathic at providing for the needs of the GLBTQ population.  They’ll make sure the pictures they show are cool images and not discriminatory.

Staff at treatment centers do not necessarily need to be certified.  It is highly recommended that you choose a center where the doctors are board-certified and the other staff is certified by an accredited college or university.  If you are going to through the process of getting clean, you want to make sure there are staff who are educated in this area who can help you through the process because you don’t want to have to go through the process again!

Some rehabilitation centers are inpatient at a residential community.  In fact, it is recommended that clients who have an addiction to drugs go to a center away from where they live and away from the things that might be influencing their habit.

If you have a mental illness, many centers can help you work both on your psychiatric disorder and your addition at the same time.

If you are gay and need help with your drug addiction, please seek help.

The History of Drug Detoxification

Most people know about detoxification as it relates to purging the body of unhealthy chemicals from food or overdoing it with sugar or caffeine. In a case like this, you want a natural detoxification to help you get back in balance. Whether as a result of an illness or simply getting on track to live more healthily, a natural detox is a great beginning. Drug detoxification takes the process a step further.

The History of Detoxification

Body cleansing or detoxification has its roots in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians, and later the Greeks, believed that foods could cause an imbalance of the body’s natural balance, that the “humors” could be misaligned by eating too much of certain foods. It was the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC) who developed the mature medical theory.

He believed certain human moods, emotions and behaviors were caused by fluids in the body: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Well into the mid-20^th century the term “autointoxication” was used to describe the theory that eating too much of certain foods would build up toxins in the body. In modern times this theory still persists. Except in the case of purging drugs from the body, the medical establishment has turned away from detoxification as a prescribed method of curing a patient’s ills. Certainly your body encounters toxins every minute of the day. Fortunately the liver, kidneys, lungs, intestines, and blood continuously clean. If we don’t introduce extra chemicals, like drugs, into our bodies then the internal cleansing process keeps us from literally poisoning ourselves.

History has very little to say about drug detox. Alcohol, the drug of choice for most of human history, does have a tried and true detox remedy in Milk Thistle. It has been known since before medieval times as a liver tonic. Modern clinical studies have confirmed the usefulness of Milk Thistle extracts in cases of cirrhosis and other chronic liver aliments associated with alcohol abuse.

History of Detoxification Services

In the late 50’s the American Medical Association made it their official position that alcoholism is a disease. Slowly shifts in society’s understanding of addiction changed how people with a dependency on alcohol and other drugs were treated. 12-step programs certainly helped. Until the mid 1970’s people arrested for “public intoxication” were held in local jails. Depending on the length of the sentence, a person might experience alcohol detox in jail, with little or no medical intervention. This happened regularly even though in 1971, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted the Uniform Alcoholism and Intoxication Treatment Act which recommended that “alcoholics not be subjected to criminal prosecution because of their consumption of alcoholic beverages but rather should be afforded a continuum of treatment in order that they may lead normal lives as productive members of society” (Keller and Rosenberg 1973, p. 2). It was only a recommendation, not a law, but it helped create a change in the legal implications of addiction. Over the next quarter century understanding of drug detoxification grew and became the medical process we recognize today.

Drug Detoxification with 12 Step Programs

The best way to define a 12-step program is that it gives you a roadmap for recovery from addiction, compulsion, or other behavioral problems. The original 12-steps were first published in1939 in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How More Than One Hundred Men Have Recovered From Alcoholism.

These are the original Twelve Steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Alcoholics Anonymous (4th ed.)

Over the years many groups, wanting to address behaviors besides alcohol addiction, have reworded the language to fit their groups’ focus as well as any differentiating religious or cultural identity. The Steps have a chameleon like ability to become what a group needs them to become.

There are as many ideas about recovery as there are stars in the sky, but the Steps work. Over and over and over, the Steps show that they work. It’s not a painless way to get over your heroin addiction, but it has the best chance of working. Once you deal with just getting the drugs out of your system, once you detox and get your head clear, then you can begin to replace the hole in your soul. Because that’s really the question, right? Why did you start using in the first place? When you get to the 4th Step…. the moral inventory, that’s when healing can really begin.

So take some time to visit the AA website and see what I mean.