Heroin Treatment

Treatment of Heroin addiction

Three-quarters of people seeking treatment for drug problems are using Opiates, mostly Heroin.

If you approach your GP or local drug treatment service for help, you'll be assessed and offered treatment. The treatment you'll receive is a care plan tailored to your needs.

Stabilising your habit

You may be prescribed a Heroin substitute, such as Lofexidine, Naltrexone, Subutex or Methadone. Substitute prescribing of an Opiate will replace the Heroin and then be reduced in a controlled manner. At first it will be prescribed at a level that minimises your withdrawal from Heroin. Heroin substitutes allow you to:

• Stabilise your drug use.
• Stop using illicit drugs.
• Change risky behaviour, such as injecting and sharing needles and equipment.
• Stop the need to commit any crimes to fund your habit.

Self help

It may be recommended that you join a self-help group where people who have had problems meet to support one another. The groups available vary from one area to another, and your drug service will be able to tell you what is available in your area.

Stopping completely

You can be offered the option of coming off substitute drugs and becoming drug free once your drug use has stabilised. You may be given the choice of either a community or inpatient detox.

Community detox is when your substitute drug dose is reduced gradually over a period of time. You may then be offered a drug called Naltrexone which can stop you relapsing because it prevents drugs such as Heroin having an effect on you.

Inpatient detox requires a two to three week stay in a hospital or residential rehab centre with detox facilities. It involves a much quicker reduction of your prescribed drug dose.

Inpatient detox will often be followed by a period in a residential rehab centre or other suitable aftercare project. It is important that you continue to make progress after the detox, and you will almost certainly need some help to stay off drugs when you leave. This can be a particularly vulnerable time. If you start using illicit Opiates again, the chances of overdose are much higher than before detox.

Residential rehab may be offered if you've already tried to give up drugs in the community and failed. You may also be offered residential rehab if you have a high drug dependency, do not have a supportive family or employment situation, have complex physical or psychiatric problems or are addicted to alcohol as well as drugs.

Residential rehab centres usually offer a combination of one-to-one counselling and group therapy as well as other therapies, social and vocational skills and educational opportunities.

Residential rehab centres are almost always provided by either specialist voluntary sector or private organisations. You should be able to access funding to enter specialist voluntary sector rehabs through your local community drug services or social services community care team. You will usually have to pay to access private clinics.

 

 

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