Heroin withdrawal syndrome

May 5, 2017

Heroin withdrawal syndrome. When one is addicted to heroin, the brain suffers the most

Heroin withdrawal syndrome: Coping strategies

Heroin withdrawal syndrome effects and coping strategies are some of the most disturbing fears most addicts sight as reasons of their unwillingness to enroll for treatment in various health facilities for the timely recovery process. With this attitude, treatment becomes very difficult because one has to begin by first addressing the issues of denial. Making such patients come to terms with their health situation is often very difficult. Some of the pertinent questions we should be asking ourselves now that we are aware that heroin withdrawal syndrome and coping strategies are the problems may include the following: what are the actual effects of these heroin withdrawal symptoms – and how do they impact the long-term health and well-being of the individual patients?

As an institution (AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of Doctor Dalal Akoury’s care) we are on top of things and our objective is to kick out all manner of addictions from our societies. That is why we only post worthy health articles tailored at helping our clients/patients get the much-needed health solutions. Therefore in this article, we have particularly designed it to convey health information in the simplest language to help in shedding some light on the impact of heroin withdrawal syndrome and also to help those who are going through the process en route to their recovery whether you are directly or indirectly affected.

Heroin withdrawal syndrome: Withdrawal from heroin can cause some discomfort

There are a number of uncomfortable side effects that accompany heroin withdrawal. These symptoms are not all that life threatening as is always the general rule, but all the same, they are the leading reason why individuals relapse or add urgency to their search for that “next fix.” Some of the uncomfortable heroin withdrawal symptoms include:

Anxiety
Chills
Fever
Restlessness
Sleeplessness
Sweating
Twitching

Heroin withdrawal syndrome: Withdrawal can also cause emotional issues

Besides the known physical discomfort that goes hand in hand with heroin withdrawal, doctor Akoury says that there are a number of mental health issues that the individual may experience as well, such may include the following:

Depression
Anxiety
Suicidal thoughts
Sudden mood swings
Irritability

Heroin withdrawal syndrome: Relapse

Finally, doctor Akoury agrees that the most serious effect of heroin withdrawal syndrome is relapsed. Because individual addicts are not able to live with the discomfort of withdrawal they often go back to their old habits. To escape from this discomforting experience in many instances they will turn to the only thing they know best that can provide relief which is more heroin even though they are struggling to stop their addiction to the drug itself. This is the reason why most if not all heroin rehab programs insist that the individuals must first complete the heroin detox process before they can be allowed to moving on into the main population of the facility. The risk of relapse is, therefore, inevitable in most cases. However when it happens, it will not be a sign of failure, you can always pick up the pieces and get back to the recovery process and defeat the problem. You may want to call doctor Akoury for further guidelines over this whole issues of withdrawal syndrome and coping strategies for a much better performance on your part.

Heroin withdrawal syndrome: Coping strategies Coping strategies

Fighting heroin addiction at family levels

September 15, 2016

Fighting heroin addiction at family levels is a must win assignment if we are to succeed in defeating this scourge

Fighting heroin addiction at family levels: Breaking the boredom

Another point doctor Akoury observed from the patient is the mind set of many people about things and situations around them. Like for instance using the story of Jimssy the addicted user, she admits that besides the advice from the wrong friend, she was curious, she wanted to understand the feelings of this drug heroin, and she confesses that “I wanted to know what this was that [Jim] was doing. Why it was so attractive. And she sought the silence that if she was to try it just briefly for a few times, it won’t do her any harm and that it wouldn’t result into addiction since it is only for a few times.” That is what she thought and besides she had also heard that heroin improved sexual performance. (The seizure medications she had taken for her epilepsy had dampened her libido.) Heroin, she says, helped her feel more sexual, and that was a big attraction. These are wrong teachings which must be disregarded by all means if fighting heroin addiction at family level is to be meaningful.

Doctor Akoury says that she had it all well planned. And in her own wisdom, to avoid getting hooked, she refrained from doing the drug for four days between uses. Then, she started doing it on the weekends “to break the boredom.” This plan may have looked brilliant, but remember that heroin is such an addictive drug and so despite her plans and to her great denial she quickly became addicted. She adds that “I saw what it had done to my husband. But I had no idea at all of the pull it had on users.” If you are listing keenly to Jimssy and you or anyone you know is struggling with any form of addiction, you can be of help first to yourself and then to the others by scheduling for an appointment with doctor Akoury today.

Fighting heroin addiction at family levels: The consequences of addiction

In the meantime Jimssy tells us that as at that time she was being introduced into drugs, she was working and earning her money from her job which was well enough to finance this new expenditure. The income helped her feed their habits and every day was such a good day because they could afford for more drugs. But it also caused strife in their relationship. They would share their drugs, and Jimssy says, the pull of addiction quickly introduced an enemy in their relationship, the enemy known as mistrust. They longer had trust for each other. She feared sending him alone to buy drugs with her money because he would take more than his share on the way home. He felt the same way about her. “It just starts eating away at your love, your partnership, the whole marriage,” she admits. Doctor Akoury reacts to this professionally and informs Jimssy that drugs will remain bad irrespective of the influence you may get from any of your friends. We will continue listening to Jimssy in our next article but for now, we must choose and choose wisely. This life we have, we can only live it once and when we still have that opportunity, then we must consult with the medical experts from time to time to have things done the right way. Talk to us today at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center and we will offer you real time solutions to all your addiction problems.

Fighting heroin addiction at family levels: Breaking the boredom

How does heroin work in the brain

May 12, 2015

How does heroin work in the brain: The truth about Heroin Addiction?

How does heroin work in the brain? the brain must function normally at all cost and effects of heroin to it must be corrected timely

When you ask me this question how does heroin work in the brain? I will respond to help you not get confused as to whether heroin is good for your health or otherwise. You cannot gamble with your life and most importantly your health. For your information, this I the most valuable asset one can ever possess in life. When experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center say that your health is your health, it is not a gimmick. It is a confirmed fact and you can attest to it even as a layman. Heroin as a drug has nothing to offer in the protection to this most valuable yet priceless asset called health. And just to erase the confusion from your mind if any, doctor Dalal Akoury the MD and founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center explains that, under normal circumstance the human body will naturally produce its own opiate-like substances and uses them as neurotransmitters. Allow me to repeat that in a different way, I have not said heroin but substances like opiate. Now listen and get some of the substances am alluding to. These substances may include endorphins, enkephalins and dynorphin and collectively they are commonly known as endogenous opioids. Endogenous opioids modulate our reactions to painful stimuli and this is where many go wrong and are attempting to associate heroin with proper functionality of the brain. That aside these endogenous also regulate vital functions such as hunger and thirst and are involved in mood control, immune response, and other processes.

And now as to the reason why opiates like heroin and morphine are affecting us so powerfully is that, these exogenous substances bind to the same receptors as our endogenous opioids. There are three kinds of receptors widely distributed throughout the brain including the mu, delta, and kappa receptors.
These receptors through the second messengers, influences the likelihood that ion channels will open, which in certain cases reduces the excitability of neurons. This reduced excitability is the likely source of the euphoric effect of opiates and appears to be mediated by the mu and delta receptors.

This euphoric effect also appears to involve another mechanism in which the GABA-inhibitory interneurons of the ventral tegmental area come into play. By attaching to their mu receptors, exogenous opioids reduce the amount of GABA released. Remember that in under normal circumstances, GABA reduces the amount of dopamine released in the nucleus accumbens. By inhibiting this inhibitor, the opiates ultimately increase the amount of dopamine produced and the amount of pleasure felt. Besides that doctor Akoury says that the chronic consumption of opiates inhibits the production of cAMP. However this inhibition will be offset in the long run by other cAMP production mechanisms. When no opiates are available, this increased cAMP production capacity comes to the fore and results in neural hyperactivity and the sensation of craving the drug.

How does heroin work in the brain: Heroin Effects on the Brain?

This is one great concern that many people are yearning to understand and for sure most people have realize that addictive drugs affect the body, but they always fail to realize that the effects of heroin on the brain can be very powerful and devastating. According to the experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center this will all starts when the heroin users takes their first dose of heroin. This will put the roller coaster in motion and sets them up for long term addiction to heroin. Remember that the initial rush of euphoria is produced by a flood of powerful opiates being sent to the brain eventually becomes the new bar for feeling good. Over time, the brain comes to demand the same level of extra opiates in order to pass that communication to the body that everything is fine. Without the extra boost of opiates, the brain shifts into panic mode, and alerts the body that more opiates are needed in order to feel normal. Thus the addiction is propagated from the level of starving opiate receptors in the brain.

How does heroin work in the brain: How does Heroin Addiction Change the Brain?

It is very sad that we all want to live well yet we often don’t do what will make us live the life we all desire. Like for instance, the brain is one of the pillar organs of good health. When the brain is healthy the whole body is too however most addicts do not realize that consistent abuse of heroin figuratively changes the brain over time. This is one of the most profound effects heroin has on the brain, because it is essentially permanent if the heroin addict has abused the drug for several years. For a better understanding, doctor Akoury explains what will happen. She says that a normal person has a certain level of dopamine that is produced on a regular basis that is trickled out to their brain so that they can simply feel normal as they go about their business. For example, after and during vigorous exercise, the body is slowly releasing small bits of this natural dopamine to the brain, so that the person can feel a bit better in spite of their hard work which is also a basic, biological survival mechanism.

How does heroin work in the brain: The Dangers of Heroin Use on the Brain?

When an addict starts using heroin every single day, what that person’s brain is basically saying is that “hey just a minute here, and then the body communicates that it is being constantly flooded with extra opiates and dopamine, so there is no need for it to produce any more naturally by itself as it should normally. I am getting all that I need and more.” And so over time, if the heroin addict continues doing heroin for years and decades, they slowly train their own body to stop all natural dopamine production. Because heroin addiction is so dangerous and has so many risks involved with long term use, most heroin addicts never make it to this end stage where their body has ceased making natural dopamine. But those who do are stuck in a predicament where their body is always going to be a bit starved for natural opiates, just so that they can feel normal. In such cases, drug maintenance therapy with a synthetic opiate is usually recommended.

Finally this phenomenon should demonstrate the power that heroin use can have, as it is actually one of the physical effects of heroin on the brain. Other effects may also include craving and the fact that heroin can literally change the chemistry of the brain over time, and grip the addict ever deeper into the clutches of heroin drug addiction thereby necessitating the need for you to seek for help with the experts at AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center.

How does heroin work in the brain: The truth about Heroin Addiction?

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally

April 23, 2015

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally: How Addicts get hooked up to Heroin

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally is becoming uncontrollable going by the rate at which young people are being hooked up to drugs

Until you get out and see for yourself or listen to people share their experience, you may not know the impact of heroin addiction in your neighborhood. The prevalence of heroin addiction globally is taking a new dimension. Currently heroin and other substance abuse are no longer drugs associated with the city centers but the net is widening even in to the local estates and neighborhoods. In the previous article we doctor Akoury shared with us the story of a young man named Felix and how he was progressively lured into drugs. From a simple experiment Felix was introduced to legal medications like the painkillers and before he knew he was an addict. In this article we are going to further on that discussion by focusing on some of the experiences other people have had an opportunity to witness. There are a lot of recordings that give us a clear picture of the prevalence of heroin addiction globally. Take for example according to recent report “Donna Holaday looks out the window of her city hall office in Newburyport, an affluent coastal city 37 miles north of Boston. Ms. Holaday has been mayor of the town the past four years and was recently reelected. Over that time, she has seen her share of municipal concerns come across her busy desk. But few have been as worrying as the growing use of heroin in her idyllic community.”

Although she knew of the drug’s presence in the city, the report continues, Holaday says that it wasn’t until police reports started surfacing and concerned residents began showing up in her office that she understood the depth of the problem and the emotional anguish it was causing. She continues to narrate that “I had a mother sitting in my office crying, telling me her story about how she pulled her son out of a trailer, just over the border in New Hampshire, and [how] he would have died [if she hadn’t intervened],” she says.

As if that was not enough other local parents also told her about finding needles and syringes in the leafy playgrounds where their children romped. Addicts were seen “shooting up” on the city’s Clipper City Rail Trail, a scenic biking and jogging path. Newburyport Police Marshal Thomas Howard says his department has responded to more than a dozen heroin overdoses in the past months. Without the use of Narcan, an overdose reversal drug, he says the number of deaths in the area “would be skyrocketing.”

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally: The trend of Heroin is affecting even the once drug Free states

Ideally, Newburyport isn’t the kind of town you’d expect to have any heroin footprint at all. It is one of those communities that seem to have everything including; beauty, wealth, a vibrant arts culture, and an enviable location. Straddling the banks of the Merrimack River and its outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, Newburyport has a storied seafaring heritage that is visible at every salt-scented turn.

Its harbor once bustled with clipper ships from around the world. The city’s High Street is a showcase of imposing Federal-style homes that trace their lineage to sea captains and speculators who plied the waters of the West Indies, trading molasses for rum in the 1700s. These same homes, once maintained by black and native American slaves, later became a means of escape as part of the Underground Railroad.

Now this city is trying to end a different kind of slavery. Mr. Pettigrew, of the DEA, lives in Newburyport. As a member of the agency’s regional office, he and his fellow agents track where the drugs flowing into New England are coming from – a trail that usually leads to cartels in Colombia and Mexico and the story continues in our next article

While heroin has always been available in the region, what’s changed recently is the purity of the drugs on the street. Pettigrew notes that the heroin that addicts used to shoot up with was 2 or 3 percent pure. Today, the street purity of the drug can be as high as 80 percent.

That potency helps explain both the drug’s wider appeal and its new danger. Heroin once had to be injected for users to get the high they were looking to achieve, but it is now concentrated enough that they can smoke or snort it to get a similar effect – methods that make heroin easier for people like Felix to use it without feeling like a junkie. The higher purity is also more likely to trigger an overdose for those who do inject it.

Like everything else, you’re trying to sell your product, so [dealers are] trying to pitch it as a more potent drug for you to take and get high off of.

Stronger heroin is only one reason behind the nation’s growing addiction problem. The other – and more prevalent cause, say police and medical experts – is the nation’s pill culture.

Felix’s route to addiction is a familiar one, according to addicts: a progression from alcohol to marijuana to painkillers to heroin. There are variations on that theme: a sports injury and a prescription for opioids that goes on far longer than it should; a peek inside the family medicine cabinet to find a trove of prescription pills – such as Percocet, OxyContin, Vicodin, codeine – that can be used as recreational drugs.

Often the introduction comes through friends who want to share a high they have discovered. Or it happens at a college party where a variety of drugs are being offered.

Finally irrespective of how this scourge begun the common denominator is that, it usually takes the same impulsive route. And once hooked, users look for doctors who will sell them prescription drugs, and when that fails, desperation sets in and the only available option is in the street. The painkiller drugs are often accessible to the street at an average cost. The condition will continue to deteriorate as sources of income gets depleted. When they can no longer finance their habits they turn to the very last resort which is fairly affordable and provide the same or better result than the painkillers. The most accessible in this case is the heroin which is much cheaper compared to other drugs we have mentioned.

The Prevalence of Heroin Addiction Globally: How Addicts get hooked up to Heroin

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