Dealing with an addiction to any type of drug can be extremely hard. These days society and the mainstream media have intensified the stigma against drugs. Popular shows like Shameless feature main characters who are constantly using drugs like cocaine and heroin while letting their life spiral out of control.

If you know someone who is in need of heroin recovery or is currently suffering from another type of opiate addiction, make sure you know how to spot the signs of an intense addiction and react quickly. Symptoms of heroin withdrawal can also cause a lot of havoc on one’s body, so knowing more about those mental and physical side effects will greatly increase your ability others in need.

Long Term Side Effects Of Heroin

While addiction is still not fully understood by everyone, the effects that the drug has on our brains are substantial. The drug has the power to radically change our brain’s chemical pathways and form a large dependency on it over the long term.

For an addict, using a drug too frequently disrupts their normal behavior and causes them to suffer from long term issues . Symptoms of heroin withdrawal come into play as an addict’s body starts to yearn strongly for the substance with scary, painful, and disruptive side effects. These can include sudden onset depression or anger, chronic fatigue, intense and unexpected shaking, bloodshot eyes, pain in certain limbs of the body, and severe migraines in some cases.

Even if they want to calm down from these physical and mental problems, many people lack the determination to cut down on their drug use. In some cases, they might even increase their daily or weekly dosage so they can get through the temporary heroin withdrawal symptoms.

Over a long period of time, heroin addicts can suffer from life threatening diseases or develop problems that wouldn’t exist if they were sober instead. Such issues include long term heart damage or heart disease, collapsed veins from injection heroin methods, lung problems, a higher risk of developing pneumonia, long term memory loss or other processing damage, increased anxiety and moodiness, kidney disease, and potential death from overdose.

Clearly you don’t want any of these issues to hurt the health of anyone. As a family member of friend of someone who is hooked to a drug, it’s your responsibility to understand where they are coming from and not quickly judge their reasons for taking it so often. Many might actually want to get heroin addiction recovery but fail to do so because they are suffering from low confidence, lack of control, and debilitating physical effects that plague their daily life. You don’t have to be an expert in the heroin addiction recovery field, but you can help be supportive and encourage them to seek professional help.

Heroin Addiction Recovery

As soon as long term signs of heroin addiction and heroin withdrawal symptoms show up, it’s critical to gain help from a detox center. That’s the first step to cleansing the body of all the toxins left from the drug before starting an organized treatment plan. However, it’s important to note that while the physical problems are possible to get rid of, any mental health disorders that stem from heroin use may not be reversible. Addiction will always pay a visit to someone’s life and cause cravings that are amplified by the stress of a mental disorder.

In addition, co-occurring mental health disorders like depression might be present in an addict’s body for a long time even after their body is cleansed. Reaching out to a local addiction specialist will be great for the addict to treat both issues in a safe and sustainable fashion.

Luckily, there are a variety of treatment methods available today for people who are struggling with heroin withdrawal symptoms. A person can choose from behavioral treatments that are combined with medications prescribed by doctor to restore functionality to their mind.

Addiction support groups and holistic therapy will also calm the rest of the body and give emotional strength to overcome any relapses that may occur in the future. The most important thing to communicate to the addict in your life is that they need to choose to take action and not be afraid to be vulnerable to gain help.

Heroin addiction recovery is not an easy path; there will rocky days and feelings of regret along the way. But considering the long term health benefits that they will benefit from, it’s more important to break addiction from a professional detox and treatment center so their life is not cut unexpectedly short.

Communicating With The Addict

Keep an open mind, remain patient, and never give up on your goal to encourage the addict in your life to seek help. If the person is especially stubborn or wants to avoid your pestering questions, catch them in a time during the day where they are the most free to talk intimately.

Make sure you let them know that you truly care about their health and are very worried for their future. To make things easier for you and the addict, you can even schedule an initial appointment with a professional treatment specialist and offer to go with them. They may agree to go or react angrily, but odds are that they will come around to learning more about ending their heroin addiction if you can just take them along for the first point of help!

Don’t Give Up

Dealing with heroin withdrawal symptoms is never an easy task, but with the right resources in your area and enough patience, you can conquer the mountain of struggle it brings. Never forget that that an addict is saving their life, money, and relationships by suffering through temporary withdrawal effects in order to break their unhealthy habit once and for all. As long as you do the best in your power to give them support and positivity, you are helping them find the road to success!