Heroin Addiction Treatment

With the crackdown on prescription drug abuse, heroin has returned as a national epidemic – killing more than 15,400 people in 2016 alone.  If you are addicted to heroin, you are not alone and there is hope. Contact us today to talk about the path to freedom from heroin. 

Heroin takes hostages.

That’s the best way we know to describe how heroin does business. Heroin rewires a person’s brain – almost instantly – to create intense feelings of pleasure and relaxation… but then it won’t let go.

Heroin lies.

Heroin will look you straight in the eye and say, “You’re mine. Without me, you will never feel happy again. Without me, you’re nothing. Without me, your pain will become so unbearable you’ll wish you were dead. You can’t make it without me.”

Heroin wants you dead.

Know how we know this? Because we heard a recovering heroin addict say: “I wanted to OD. Because that would be an easy way to end all the pain and suffering. And I would not have to worry about how I was going to get high the next day.”

Here’s the truth heroin does not want you to know: 

  • Heroin does not own you.

  • You are beautiful and valuable and brilliant all on your own.

  • There is a life for you on the other side of heroin, and it is so, so, so much better than what you’re calling a life right now.

Please, let us help you put heroin in your rearview mirror – forever

There’s no safe (or safer) way to do heroin. 

Any method of heroin use – smoking it, snorting it, injecting it, swallowing it – can cause immediate harm, addiction and death. End of story.

You can overdose no matter how you do heroin.

Heroin isn’t heroin

Pure heroin is a form of opioid produced from morphine. On its own, it’s dangerous, addictive and deadly. But there’s no way to be sure that what’s sold as heroin really is heroin. Why? Because dealers cut heroin with everything, to add bulk so they can turn more profit:

Heroin isn’t heroin Part II

Here’s where it gets even more dangerous. Dealers lace heroin with other drugs that are much, much stronger. There is absolutely no way to know if what you’re about to put in your body is going to kill you.

Some of the drugs they use:

  • Fentanyl (more on this later)

  • Carfentanil (way more on this later)

  • Cocaine

  • Angel dust

About Fentanyl

As if heroin could get any uglier. Fentanyl is a synthetic painkiller that’s 80-100 times more powerful than morphine. In the 1980s, it was sold on the street as a “brand” of heroin called China White. But now dealers lace heroin with fentanyl because of the intense high it causes, and because they can make a lot more money. It’s economics, in the most twisted possible way.

It’s also killing a lot of people. The combination of the two drugs produces a sense of euphoria, but also nausea, drowsiness and confusion. The more narcotics a body absorbs, the less urge the body has to breathe. Take just a little too much, and you stop breathing completely.

In 2016:

  • 15,400 people died from heroin overdoses.

  • 20,100 people died from fentanyl and fentanyl analogues

More people will die today. Carfentanil? The most dangerous of the fentanyl analogues. Remember we said fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine? Carfentanil is 100 times more powerful than fentanyl. It has absolutely no approved uses for people – it’s used to tranquilize elephants. Touching carfentanil with your bare hands can kill you. Ingesting carfentanil the size of a grain of salt will kill you. And illegal drug labs are cutting it into heroin.

Heroin Short-Term

Using heroin – even once – can produce any number of reactions:

  • Feelings of intense pleasure,

  • Relief from pain and anxiety

  • Feverishness

  • Flushing of the skin

  • Feelings of heaviness in the arms and legs

  • Dry mouth

  • Nausea and vomiting

  • Itching, often severe

  • Profound sense of wellbeing

  • Heightened feelings of confidence

  • Mental fog

  • Slowed or irregular heart rate

  • Convulsions

  • Drowsiness

  • Unconsciousness, or slipping in and out of consciousness (that’s called “nodding”)

  • Slowed breathing, sometimes dangerously so

  • Hypoxia (severe reduction of the amount of oxygen reaching the brain)

  • Coma

  • Permanent brain damage

  • Pulmonary edema

  • Kidney failure

  • Death

Narcan Isn’t the Solution

Narcan might – might – keep you alive if you’re overdosing. Thank heaven it exists. Long used by first responders and in emergency rooms, it’s now carried by loved ones of addicts and by the addicts themselves. Some people flat-line 5, 10, 20 times. If you think you’ve flat-lined too many times for treatment to work for you, you are wrong. Please, let us help. We’ll figure it out together.

Heroin addiction:

You spend more and more of your time, energy and money getting your heroin. Doesn’t matter how messed up it makes you, or how many people you hurt.

Heroin tolerance:

 You need more and more to get the same result. Or maybe snorting doesn’t work for you anymore, so you start to shoot up.

Heroin dependance:

Your body has to have the heroin. This is your new normal. We desperately want to help you see that there’s nothing normal about it… and that you need help. The people who love you desperately want you to see that there’s nothing normal about it, and that there is another way.

Heroin Long-Term

You can look for this kind of list all over the web, all the ways heroin rips a person’s life into shreds. Why would we repeat it here? Two reasons. One: We don’t want you to get this far. Two: If you’re already deep into your addiction, you wouldn’t be the first person we’ve helped get past it.

  • Needle marks, skin damage and bruising (from shooting)

  • Collapsed veins (from shooting)

  • Skin infections and sores filled with pus (absesses)

  • Diseased internal organs: Heart, liver, kidneys

  • Homelessness

  • Jail time and criminal record

  • HIV/AIDS

  • Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C

  • Sexual abuse or rape

  • Mental illness

  • Damage to nasal tissues (from snorting), including septal perforation, sinus problems, and nose bleeds

  • Lung cancer, emphysema, pulmonary edema, tuberculosis

  • Throat cancer

  • Impaired decision-making

  • Memory loss

  • Shortening of life span

  • Financial ruin

  • Overdose

  • Fatal overdose

Heroin Withdrawl

Once the body has begun to depend on the drug to provide pain relief or pleasure, it doesn’t want to let go. The cravings are irresistible. There isn’t a cell in the body that isn’t affected when the brain doesn’t get the heroin when the brain wants the heroin. Withdrawal looks different for everybody, and it’s always horrible:

  • Anxiety and severe agitation

  • Muscle spasms and cramps

  • Joint pain and muscle pain

  • Stomach cramps and diarrhea

  • Chills and fever

  • Sweating

  • Restlessness and inability to sleep

  • Nausea and vomiting

  • Pounding heart

  • Insatiable cravings for the drug

We can’t imagine anyone getting through this alone, especially when the single fastest way to relieve this terrible suffering is give your body the drug. Heroin addiction is a brain disease. You cannot cure yourself. You cannot get through it alone. We have relationships with reputable, effective detox programs where you can get clean, once and for all, before you come to Desert Rose to heal and reclaim your life. Call now to get started.