The chemical cocaine hydrochloride is commonly known as crack. There are users who chemically process cocaine in order to take away the hydrochloride. This process is called “freebasing” and makes the drug more potent. “Crack” is a concrete form of freebased cocaine. It is called “crack” because it snaps and cracks when heated and smoked. Since crack is a prepared form of freebased cocaine, the user does not have to be exposed to the explosive chemicals associated with freebasing. Crack is normally in vials and sold in small quantities, usually 300-500mg or enough for two to three inhalations.

In the 1970s, cocaine was expensive and considered a “status” drug. The introduction of inexpensive crack increased the convenience of this substance, and crack has become the drug of choice for many drug users, especially for inner-city disadvantaged youth. This has been the beginnings of the growing crack addiction. Crack’s convenience, ease of concealment, wide availability, and low cost has increased its use. The fact that crack is smoked rather than injected has added to its popularity.

The preconceived notion that drug addiction only happens on the street is largely false. It is a common fact that celebrities have their “shining moments” when it comes to substance dependence. They may look pleasant and very much happy in front of cameras, but their deepest secrets are yet to be revealed. A number of celebrities have already been into rehabilitation to fight their crack addiction, heroin, or even alcohol addiction.

Long before Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears hogged the headlines with their wild child antics, there was Drew Barrymore. At the age of nine, Drew was already smoking cigarettes. She was an alcoholic at 11, a marijuana smoker by 12, and a cocaine addict by 13. She went to rehab twice and even attempted suicide when she was 14. Right now, that is all in the past. Her wild child days behind her, Barrymore has grown into a sober, responsible and productive woman. Aside from starring in a slew of hits, she has also become a producer, forming the production company Flower Films with friend and partner Nancy Juvonen in 1995. Her company is responsible for hits like Charlie’s Angels and 50 First Dates. Quite a turnaround for a woman with a childhood as messed up as hers.

There are actually two sides to this Oprah-Winfrey-was-a-drug-addict story. On one hand, there’s the memorable TV moment in the 90s when she tearfully told in her own talk show that she had smoked crack cocaine while in her 20s, but never said anything about dependence on the drug or anything else. On the other hand, there’s the more latest allegation made in a tell-all book by a previous boyfriend that Oprah was actually a customary cocaine user in the 80s, and was in fact under the influence during her show tapings.

Right now, we can clearly see that Oprah Winfrey has triumphed over the use of cocaine. As of September 2008, Forbes has listed Oprah to acquire wealth worth over $2.7 billion. CNN and Time Magazine dubbed her “arguably the world’s most powerful woman”. She is quite the success story, sordid drug past or not.

Any kind of substance addiction, be it crack addiction can happen to anyone in all walks of life. Life is largely unpredictable. On a certain point we are having a good laugh with friends living the good life, the next time we know, we are shaking and craving for a drug we never thought we couldn’t seem to live without. People may be aware of the effects of drugs if abused, yet they still give in to curiosity, probably, or to pressure and thus end up living miserably. However, there is still hope for every addict in this world. Life doesn’t end in addiction. It ends when one gives up.

During pregnancy, the woman is greatly at risk and vulnerable to toxins and other harmful substances. Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs are substances known as teratogens. Teratogens are substances that cause negative effects towards the fetus inside the mother’s womb. These substances would in turn result to a sick or worse, abnormal baby.

Alcohol is one teratogen that could greatly affect the woman’s pregnancy. People may not know of its danger and still allow a woman to drink alcoholic drinks during her pregnancy, but the effect of this would be carried by the baby for the rest of his or her life. Alcohol is one of the known causes of mental and physical birth defects specifically in the United States. Though, this is only a probability, the rate is high.

For one, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a disorder that can occur to the embryo when a pregnant woman ingests alcohol during pregnancy. Alcohol crosses the placental barrier and can inhibit fetal growth, create distinctive facial stigmata, damage neurons and brain structures, and cause other physical, mental, or behavioral problems. The main effect of FAS is permanent central nervous system damage, especially to the brain. Developing brain cells and structures are underdeveloped by before birth alcohol exposure, often creating an array of primary cognitive and functional disabilities including poor memory, attention deficits, impulsive behavior, and poor cause-effect reasoning, as well as secondary disabilities for example, mental health problems, and drug addiction.

The signs and symptoms of a having fetal alcohol syndrome are low birth mass, small head circumference, developmental interruption, organ dysfunction, facial abnormalities, including smaller eye openings, flattened cheekbones, and indistinct philtrum (an underdeveloped groove between the nose and the upper lip), epilepsy, poor management, poor socialization skills, such as difficulty building and maintaining friendships and relating to groups, lack of imagination, learning difficulties, including poor memory, inability to understand concepts such as time and money, poor language comprehension, poor problem-solving skills, behavioral problems including hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, social withdrawal, stubbornness, impulsiveness, and anxiety.

As said earlier, damage of the central nervous system is the main feature of fetal alcohol syndrome. Central nervous system damage can be evaluated in three areas such as structural, neurological, and functional impairments. Structural deficiencies includes microcephaly (small head size) of two or more standard deviations below the average, or other abnormalities in brain structure. During the first trimester of pregnancy, alcohol impedes with the migration and organization of brain cells, which can make structural deficits within the brain. During the third trimester, damage can be caused to the hippocampus, which plays a role in memory, learning, emotion, and encoding visual and auditory information, all of which can create neurological and functional CNS impairments as well.

When structural impairments are not observable, neurological impairments are assessed. Neurological problems are expressed as either diagnosable disorders, such as epilepsy or other seizure disorders, or soft signs. Soft signs are broader, nonspecific neurological impairments, such as impaired fine motor skills, neurosensory hearing loss, poor gait, clumsiness, poor eye-hand coordination.

When structural or neurological impairments are not observed, all four diagnostic systems allow CNS damage due to prenatal alcohol exposure to be assessed in terms of functional impairments. Functional impairments are deficits due to prenatal alcohol exposure (rather than hereditary causes or postnatal insults) in observable and measurable domains related to daily functioning, often referred to as developmental disabilities.

The production of birth deficiencies is not a measure on the amount of alcohol being ingested. Individual women process alcohol differently. Other factors differ the results, too, such as the age of the mother, the timing and regularity of the alcohol ingestion, and whether the mother has eaten any food while drinking.

Alcohol easily passes the placental barrier and the fetus is less equipped to eliminate alcohol than its mother, so the fetus tends to accept a high concentration of alcohol, which stays behind longer than it would in the mother’s system. That explains why the child is the one greatly affected when in fact it is the mother who consumes the alcohol. Unfortunately true.

Addiction has been a problem to society. It is “the” trouble that seems to not end. People use drugs, abuse it, then they become depended to it. They hurt their loved ones and they hurt their selves. Their lives crave for the drug and become entwined to looking for means of attaining the drugs. Later on, the person then realizes that life has become worthless and meaningless and that he wants to change. He wants to turn away from drugs but the problem is that he couldn’t easily turn away and say good bye to his long time influential friend- the drug.

Then, he seeks for help from hi loved ones. He seeks for professional help to intoxicate him from the drug. Rehabilitation centers provide help to those who have substance use problems. They provide medical help as well as psychological and social reformation. However, rehabilitation may not be adequate for the full recovery of the person. The patient should be prepared with the right values and abilities in facing the real world after rehabilitation.

Groups such as alcoholics anonymous, emotions anonymous, and cocaine anonymous are fellowship groups that provide spiritual enhancement and life skills program to people who wish to receive them. Anybody who is determined to modify and turn away from such addictions or someone who merely wants to help victims recover form the darkness they were in is very welcome to join the fellowship. Inside this organization, members help each other to recover from their problems. The fellowship believes that the best people who could understand addicts are those who have been addicts themselves. Sympathy and compassion will never be enough. Someone who has experienced any kind of addiction would really understand the feeling of an addict and thus, would be able to provide the right comfort and support.

Such groups does not just rely on spiritual and medical help. They also make use of the twelve-step program. This twelve-step program was first formulated by the alcoholics anonymous. This consists of twelve steps on how to deal with the addiction, with emphasis on acceptance, surrender, and self-awareness. The twelve step program tries to impart that there is one very potent being above us all, and that we should surrender all our weaknesses to Him and al will be well. Of course, man should do his best to become a better person and God will then do the rest.

Here is the Twelve-Step Program of the Emotions Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions — 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 and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

With the twelve-step program, individuals who have become victims of addiction are given optimism that it is not too late – that life does not end in addiction. In fact, it even opens a new entry, a new part in our lives in which we should live meaningfully.

Public Health Alert about Cocaine or Crack Use

Life Threatening Risk: Cocaine Laced with Levamisole

** ALERT **

We always do our best to provide information and help to all of our readers from an unbiased and non judgmental standpoint. In that spirit, we want to make sure that if you or someone you care about is using Cocaine or using Crack that they be aware of the following information and they should seek professional medical help immediately.

Alcohol and other drug programs across California should be on the lookout for a dangerous substance levamisole that is showing up with increasing frequency in illicit cocaine powder and crack cocaine, most recently in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Levamisole is a veterinary anti-parasitic drug and it severely reduces the number of white blood cells in humans leading to an acute condition called agranulocytosis that should be treated at a hospital. Ingesting cocaine mixed with levamisole suppresses immune function and the body’s ability to fight off even minor infections. People who snort, smoke, or inject crack or powder cocaine contaminated by levamisole can experience overwhelming, rapidly-developing, life threatening infections.

Agranulocytosis manifests the following symptoms:

infections that won’t go away or get worse very fast, including sore throat or mouth sores; skin infections; abscesses; thrush (white coating of the mouth, tongue or throat); pneumonia (fever, cough, shortness of breath)

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) began alerting medical professionals, substance abuse treatment centers, and other public health authorities in September about the risks.

Used in veterinary medicine, levamisole is currently approved for use in cattle, sheep and swine as an anti-parasitic agent. Formerly used in human medicine for treating autoimmune diseases and cancer, it is no longer approved for human use.

SAMHSA is working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and other federal and international organizations, as well as state agencies to monitor the levamisole issue. CDC will publish a case report analysis in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report and will work with state health departments to systematically collect information on cocaine-associated agranulocytosis cases. Information from this effort will be used to guide treatment and prevention initiatives to address the public health concern.

According to the DEA and state testing laboratories, the percentage of cocaine specimens containing levamisole has increased steadily since 2002, with levamisole now found in more than 70 percent of the illicit cocaine analyzed last July. In addition, a recent analysis in Seattle, Washington, found that almost 80 percent of individuals who test positive for cocaine also test positive for levamisole.

ADP is asking all providers to report suspected and confirmed cases of agranulocytosis associated with cocaine abuse to their local health departments. Cases can also be reported to local Poison Control Centers (1-800-222-1222), which may assist in clinical management and additional reporting. For further medical/technical information, contact Nicholas Reuter, SAMHSA Nicholas.reuter@samhsa.hhs.gov

This Cocaine Related Health Alert was sent to us to help keep you informed. The SAMHSA stands for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). If you or a loved one need help with cocaine addiction or abuse please call the number on this site, or if you require medical attention contact a medical professional right away.

Emotions are a part of life. It is part of being human. In fact, it is what makes us human. We laugh when we are happy, we cry when we are sad and disappointed, and we let out our rage when we are furious and mad. And, that is natural. Everyday, we express various emotions more than we could envision. Typically, situations that we encounter trigger these emotions. And the body, as emotional feelings are natural to it, is able to cope with these expressions of emotions through a cycle. As psychologists would say, an individual does not feel the same emotion over a very long period of time. What we feel sooner or later changes. Precisely saying, the longest time you could feel happy is ten days. After that, the feeling of happiness subsides, probably shifting to anxiety or sadness.

As unusual as it seems, there are individuals who cannot deal naturally with their emotions. An emotional problem is not just a simple problem. One is not able to function well due to the disruption of its emotions. Usually, people would utilize defense mechanisms as to cover up their emotional problems. However, this would in turn cause some disruption in their daily lives. And, moreover, it could affect the people around them. Moreover, emotional problems could be caused by alcoholism or any addiction problems. When one is addicted, the person does not only become physically attached to the object of addiction, but also he or she becomes emotionally attached to the object of addiction.

Emotions Anonymous is a twelve-step organization, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. It caters to people whose emotions are causing difficulties in their lives. Emotions such as depression, anxiety, fear, loneliness, anger, compulsion, and obsessions are the most common in which the members had to deal with. Emotions Anonymous was started on July 6, 1971. Emotions Anonymous meetings are self-supporting by voluntary contributions of its members. Emotions Anonymous is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, nor does it endorse or oppose any causes. The main objective of Emotions Anonymous is to show its members how to stay well emotionally and how to help others to become emotionally well.

Here is the 12-step program used by Emotional Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our emotions — 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 and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

With emotions anonymous, people in all walks of life are able to seek help from others and may find comfort and direction from those who have been there and had done that, or even share sympathy with people are experiencing the same thing. Indeed, social support is very important and could be a cure to emotional illness.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

- Vince Lombardi

Will, or the drive to do something is an ability that every people are capable of having but they are yet to discover it. Will power is the ability to overcome laziness and procrastination. It is the ability to control unnecessary impulses. It is the ability to arrive to a decision and follow it with perseverance until its successful accomplishment. It is the inner power that overcomes the want to indulge in unnecessary and useless habits, and the inner strength that overcomes inner emotional and mental resistance for taking action. As they say, it is one of the corner stones of success, both spiritual and material.

Usually, the concept of willpower is mostly useful in the process of modifying behaviors and eliminating bad habits. Everyone possesses some habits they wish they could overcome, such as smoking, excessive eating, laziness, procrastination or lack of assertiveness. To overcome these habits or addictions, one requires to have will power and self discipline. They make a great difference in everyone’s life, and bring inner strength, self mastery and decisiveness.

These days, the question of how to have willpower arises with the powerful influence of media. Commercials have attempted to position their products as a substitute to willpower. They start by saying that willpower doesn’t work and then attempt to sell you something “fast and easy” like a diet pill or some wacky exercise equipment. Often they’ll even promise impossible results in a dramatically short period of time.

Willpower actually works. Willpower is a concentration of force. You gather up all your energy and make a massive thrust forward. You attack your problems strategically at their weakest points until they crack, allowing you enough room to maneuver deeper into their territory and finish them off. To be capable to apply willpower, one should first choose an objective. Then, create a plan of attack, and finally, execute the plan. An effective method for developing and improving these abilities is to perform certain activities, which you would rather avoid doing due to laziness, procrastination, weakness, shyness, etc. By doing something that you do not like doing or are too lazy to do, you overcome your subconscious resistance, train your mind to obey you, strengthen your inner powers and gain inner strength. Muscles get stronger by opposing the power of the barbells. Inner strength is reached by overcoming inner resistance.

Willpower, however, cannot be attained right away. It takes time for you to fully acquire this capability. Moreover, practicing your capacity to have willpower in trying to do the things that you hate to do. In your everyday dealings with things such as having to wash the dishes, cooking a healthy meal instead of ordering fast food, and having to wake up in the morning to run a mile or two, you can live out willpower, resisting the temptation and evil caressing hands of laziness.

Furthermore, in more serious cases such as quitting drug use, the first step is having the willpower and grit to change and quit the bad habit. In rehabilitation centers, patients are trained and encouraged to practice their willpower and take control over their lives, over their addiction.

Willpower by the word itself is such a powerful thing. When people possess willpower, they will be able to do the things that in the first place they are very unwilling to do. It is like with willpower, you are fighting your resisting mind.

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause disability that is not expected as part of normal development. A mental illness may be possibly caused by several factors such as genetics, environment, and chemical imbalances in the brain. It is called mental merely because normally, the illness does not engage much anatomical dysfunctions. Usually, the disorder involves a thinking that something is wrong when physically, it seemed as if nothing is wrong. The symptoms are more internal rather than external. People may think that it is normal for someone to be talking to himself for a while. However, when this symptom last longer, longer than a certain period and disrupts bodily functions, then a mental illness may be diagnosed.

As they say, we all are crazy. We all have that craziness within us. It is just a matter of how we manage our differences and extremities that we are able to handle our craziness. Moreover, many ask if mental illnesses really do exist. The English-speaking world has not always used medical language to describe the behavior we now label as symptomatic of mental disorder. Illlustrations were sometimes framed in quite different terms, such as possession. What we now call mental illness was not always treated as a medical problem. Non-English-speaking nations in the West have had changes in their linguistic usage and their treatment of the mentally ill roughly parallel to Anglophone countries. Anthropological work in non-Western cultures suggests that there are many cases of behavior that psychiatry would organize as symptomatic of mental disorder, which are not seen within their own cultures as signs of mental illness.

However, nowadays, it has been argued that mental disorders are really existing mental conditions that may be a reason of disruption in a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a reduced capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.

Mental illness does not choose an individual to carry the burdens of the disorder. Mental illnesses are not the result of personal weakness, lack of character or poor upbringing. Mental illnesses are treatable. Most people diagnosed with a serious mental illness can experience a break from their symptoms by actively participating in an individual treatment plan. In addition to medication treatment, psychosocial treatment such as cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, peer support groups and other community services can also be components of a treatment plan and that assist with recovery. The availability of transportation, diet, exercise, sleep, friends and meaningful paid or volunteer activities contribute to overall health and wellness, including mental illness recovery.

Unfortunately, society may be responsible for one’s failure in recovering form a mental illness. When the person is cured inside a medical institution, he or she is given sufficient treatment and is treated as if they are normal. They are given proper care and attention so as to promote recovery. However, when they go out into the real world after some time, society, upon knowing their past, would most likely ridicule them and treat them differently. Society would look at them as someone who still has the mental disorder and resultingly, it would make them feel worse and thus, could trigger an incidence of the mental illness once again.

The feelings of inadequateness would cause problems for a person with mental disorder. He would think that he I not valuable to live in this world given that he could not act properly anymore. However, support from family and friends would be a great help for the patient to view life differently and positively. Thus it is the role of the family to provide the patient with love and care so as to sustain his recovery.

In 2000 I was in a near fatal car accident and broke 123 bones in my body. By the looks of the vehicle, anyone who saw it guessed no one could have possibly survived. Somehow I did. I was awake when they found me and I remember saying something about being late to my brother’s soccer game now. I had no feeling in my legs.

A few days later I woke up in the hospital with a very limited range of movement. My head was cloudy and pumped full of morphine. From my waist down felt like the pins and needles of bumping your funnybone. My mother and father were sitting next to me. My mother wept quietly as she told me I would be confined to a wheelchair for a while because my spinal cord had been badly damaged. I knew that by, “a while” she meant the rest of my life. I told her not to cry, that it would be o.k. She kissed my forehead.

My father stood still in the corner of the room, with a sad look of fear that I had never seen on him. He sat down at the corner of the bed and told me how much he loved me and how relieved he was that I was alive. Soon the nurse came in and told them to come back in the morning after I’d been through some tests.

The next few days were excruciating. The burning feeling below my waist got worse and worse with each passing day. Morphine was my only savior.

I was released from the hospital after two weeks with plenty of prescriptions. The pain would never go away. I went back to college in a wheelchair, but soon dropped out because the drugs were too heavy on my mind. I sank into a black hole of depression and not long after, replaced my morphine prescription with heroin. Heroin, she was exactly what the name describes. She was my heroin. I no longer thought about life without legs. Or the things I could no longer do. The pain I was to endure for eternity melted away with the mere sight of a needle. I did a pretty good job of hiding my junk from my family. They were so used to seeing me depressed and on drugs that they could barely notice the imposter in my pain medicine.

Heroin became my top goal in life. For years after I first got my wings, I would wake up from a nod and call my “friends” to come pick me up and take me to the park. I spent countless hours in the park panhandling, juicing up, and watching children play with youthful legs.

One morning around three a.m., I woke up on my parent’s laundry room floor covered in vomit and a needle in my leg. My mother was on the phone and my father was sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. They thought I was dead. When I groaned, my father looked at me with the most thoughtful eyes I had ever seen. Heroin, my savior, the relief of all my pain and hopelessness, had become my death knell. The ambulance picked me up and I spent another two weeks in a hospital before being shipped off to a treatment center.

I have been off the junk for 8 months now, thanks to this place. If my mom and dad are reading this, I just want to say I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you so much pain or cost you so much money. I have betrayed you. But Mom and Dad, if you can find it in your hearts to forgive me, I will do everything in my power to repair all the damage and become the son you once had. I love you.

Addiction may seem simple and easy to treat as long as the right facilities and the right people are available. However, addiction did not develop overnight, in turn, it is also not a one-night process to treat, addiction treatment is something the addict and his loved ones had to live each day until hope comes to reality and the patient recovers.

We all know that substance dependency starts with having tolerated the drug in the body until the body develops dependency and addiction symptoms such as, craving, anxious behavior if not having to obtain the drug is experienced. Then, the person becomes an addict. For the drug dependent, the drug is his or her only rescue to normally function- normal in the sense that he doesn’t feel any anxiety and he feels relaxed and euphoric once he or she takes in the drug. Without knowing, the addict’s body eventually is destroyed by the drug by too much dependency that the chemical balance in the brain is destroyed and would then lead to psychological abnormalities. These psychological effects are manifested in the person’s behavior. Thus, affecting his everyday routine, interaction with other people, and his personal life.

When seen as a psychological illness, it cannot be treated through medication alone but the need to modify the individual’s cognition and behavior. Cognitive and behavioral therapies are used together with certain medications in order to cure addiction.

Drug rehabilitation centers are institutions that provide opportunities for drug addicts to face their problems and treat these problems. These places recommend various programs that would fit different kinds of substance abuse problem. Different substance abuse problems entail different treatment programs. Consequently, finding drug rehab program is simple, but finding for a drug rehab program that is effective and can meet your individual needs is not that easy. In a drug rehab program, there are many components.

Drug detoxification program is the very first step in treating drug addiction. This is the process where the body is being cleaned by the toxins brought by the addiction. In order to treat the addiction, one should be free from the drug. Thus, taking it out from the patient’s system is one vital stage of the rehab program. Sadly, at this point, the patient goes through physical and psychological pain. Withdrawal symptoms may happen. Detox, on the other hand, recommend 24-hour nursing and medication to help alleviate painful withdrawal symptoms.

Drug rehabilitation programs has a lot to offer. Inpatient treatment is a step in the program after detox where the patient participates in group, individual, and family treatment. Outpatient addiction theraphy often follows inpatient addiction treatment once the patient is well enough to go back home and keep his or her improvement. Substance dependency theraphy services are still accessible, but the patient is not required to stay at the drug rehab facility.

Family addiction treatment is vital to a patient’s success in drug rehab programs. This is to solve underlying issues causing the addiction. This process helps the patients to resolve problems with hir or her family members that might have contributed to the addiction. Also, the participation of family members mean a comforting message to the patient that no matter what happens, family is always there to support whatever one is going through, in good times and in bad times. Also, during this period, the patient is no the only one who’s mistakes are discussed. Also, the likely faults and deficiencies of family members are also discussed and corrected.

More than a serious problem, drug addiction is also a complex disorder. To cure this problem, necessary and efficient rehabilitation program should be used.

Heroin is the substance that is known to be commonly abused. It is a highly addictive drug derived from morphine, obtained from the opium poppy. It acts on the person rapidly, as fast as 3 to 6 seconds. It is a depressant drug. It affects the brain’s pleasure systems and interferes with the brain’s ability to perceive pain. With heroin, pain receptors of the brain are blocked, thus, the person is less likely to feel pain once he/she takes in the drug.

Originally, heroin was promoted as a non-addictive drug. In fact, the name heroin means “heroic treatment” derived from the German word heroisch. From 1898 to 1910, it was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children. However, in 1924, the United States’ “Heroin Act” made it illegal to possess or manufacture heroin in the country.

Nowadays, heroin is typically sold as a brownish powder or as the black sticky substance known as the “black tar heroin”.

Heroin is usually snorted. A heroin addict usually injects himself four times a day. Intravenous injection supplies the greatest intensity and most fast set of euphoria. After about 7 to 8 seconds following the injecting, the person would then feel the rush. Intramuscular shot produces as slower onset of euphoria. Injection continues to be the main method of heroin use among addicted users seeking treatment; however, researchers have observed a shift in heroin use patterns, from injection to sniffing and smoking. In fact, snorting heroin is at the present the most widely reported means of taking heroin among users admitted for drug treatment.

Heroin works in the brain by converting itself to morphine then binding quickly to the brain’s opioid receptors. The addict would feel a gratifying feeling. The intensity of the rush would depend on the dosage of the drug. The rush is usually accompanied by a warm flushing of the skin, dry mouth, and the heavy feeling in the extremities, which may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and severe itching. After the initial effects, abusers usually will be drowsy for several hours. Mental function is clouded by heroin’s effect on the central nervous system. Cardiac function slows. Breathing is also severely slowed, sometimes to the point of death. Heroin overdose is a particular risk on the street, where the amount and purity of the drug cannot be accurately known.

Heroin’s long-term effect is another story. Chronic users may develop collapsed veins, infection of the heart lining and valves, abscesses, cellulites, and liver disease. Moreover, the most detrimental long-term effects of heroin is dependence to the substance itself. Heroin abuser eventually becomes too dependent on the drug that he/she spends most of his/her time and energy obtaining and using the drug. When addiction sets in, the individual’s primary goal will be to look for and use the substance. Furthermore, with continuous use, this could cause death to the addict.

Heroin addiction is not free from withdrawal symptoms, once the use is stopped. The withdrawal syndrome from heroin can begin within 12 hours of discontinuation of the sustained use of the drug: sweating, malaise, anxiety, depression, persistent and intense penile erection in males, general feeling of heaviness, cramp-like pains in the limbs, yawning and lachrymation, sleep difficulties, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, cramps and fever can happen. There is also a considerable risk of tonic-clonic, which can lead to stroke possibly resulting in lasting disability including blindness or paralysis, or heart attacks which can potentially be fatal.

The drug heroin is quite lethal especially to those users whose health is in poor condition. Heroin can serve as a teratogen among pregnant users. Among pregnant addicts, not only does the drug affect the user, but it greatly affects the baby.

Heroin addiction is one of the most dangerous substance-abuse problems among all other. With this drug, the person becomes greatly dependent on the drug that it becomes their main purpose of living. Consequently, treatment is not that easy. It takes time, effort, and will power for an addict to be treated.