Heroin Addiction: Still a Leading Health Concern! Can Rehab Do Enough to Help?

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 494,000 people were addicted to heroin in 2017. The number continues to rise every year as estimate puts about .2 persons per a hundred succumbing to drug use and abuse needing rehabilitation. In 2015 alone, a total of 81,000 people were reported to have been subjected to emergency visits for unintentional poisoning brought by heroin overuse. And around 16,000 was said to have died of a heroin overdose in 2017.

Heroin still ranks on top of illegal substances abused because it is abundantly trafficked by drug cartels around the country. Most of our supply comes from opium poppy plants cultured in Mexico or Columbia and the trade route far extends to some Southwest and Southeast Asian countries. Despite the government’s efforts to subdue the criminal network, the heroin is still abundant in the country. Heroin addiction is still considered as a top concern for health and mental management, considering the number of people who are drawn to addiction and untimely death.

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Common Causes of Heroin Addiction:

Just like any illicit substance, heroin entraps its users because of how the chemical affects behavior and a person’s mind. Most addicts start with recreational use which leads to physical dependence and ultimately addiction. The impact of drug abuse varies per individual and can be dependent on the extent of his addiction.

Heroin is one of the most enslaving substances and being hooked often leads to compounding effects that make treatment hard. But despite being one of the most potent elements, recovery is not impossible. Most people who have gone through intensive self-realization and drug treatment, stay away from the effects of the substance for good.

There are various reasons why a person gets entangled with heroin. Often, a person’s vulnerability is foreshadowed by environmental factors including the people he deals with every day and a family history of addiction. A person’s susceptibility to heroin abuse can also be triggered by emotional and mental issues pushing a person to use and abuse the substance.

A co-occurring mental problem makes a recovery doubly hard for a person undergoing treatment from a high end rehab center because he has to deal with his psychological and emotional issues while pushing away the life he has grown accustomed to. In most cases where the rehabilitation was done inadequately, a recovering addict goes back to his old ways. This is why dual diagnosis has to be ruled out, and proper treatment has to be enforced during the whole rehab process.

Differentiating Recreational Use and Addiction:

The Pew Charitable Trust, a public safety performance monitoring project, reports that heroin, among other substance, has been on the rise in the previous years. This coincides to reports of overdose emergency cases and deaths throughout the country. They also report that between the years 2007 to 2013, heroin seizure increased by 289%. This increase is attributed to the drop in marijuana prices which has contributed to more profitable manufacturing of heroin. Mexico has even outranked Columbia as the biggest supplier of heroin in the US with both countries providing most of the supplies around the United States.

Though most addicts consider their heroin use as recreational, there are many different facets of addiction that remains unclear to them. Most users start experimenting with the drugs which were either illicitly introduced by an acquaintance or was illicitly pursued by the drug users themselves.

Several reports also prove that most heroin users started experimenting with the drug during their teenage years and brought their recreational use to early adulthood. Most people who began experimenting with the drug did not think they’d succumb to addiction. Though with some people, their occasional use did not result in drug abuse.

It should be considered though, that people have different reasons for experimenting with heroin. Recreational use may not be as implicating as you would want to think of it, but continued use for more extended periods often lead to addiction. The main difference between recreational use and drug addiction lies with how your body is embroiled with the drug and how staying away leads to undesirable effects.

Heroin or Marijuana: What’s the Difference:

Marijuana is slowly being accepted as an effective medication for the treatment of several debilitating diseases including Alzheimer’s and cancer. Although not every state still considers the use of marijuana legal, there are several who have moved to approve and regulate its recreational use. Oregon and Alaska were the first states who started its legalization followed by 31 others during the following years.

Heroin, on the other hand, still maintains its illegality considering the substance is highly addictive, and there are no proven studies for its medical use. The drug is a by-product of dried and crushed opium combined with synthetic drugs. Pure heroin has a bitter taste and appears in a whitish powdered form.

Heroin also goes through a refining process while marijuana typically comes in a naturally plucked form. To an extent, marijuana is arguably not considered physically addictive while heroin creates severe withdrawal symptoms causing physical dependence and addiction.

As the government moves to lessen the severity of addiction in the country, there are circulating legislation of replacing opioid abuse with what is dubbed as the medical marijuana program. Though medical-grade opioid has been used to helps relieve pain, heroin comes in an unrestricted form which makes it highly addictive.

The use of opioid medications has been seen as a precursor to heroin abuse but only a small percentage of Americans using medical opioid resort to misuse and addiction. These findings, based on the Prescription Opioids and Heroin Research Report shows that medicated opioid use is not a predominant factor leading to heroin use and abuse.

Long-term Effects of Heroin Use:

Aside from the feelings of euphoria, people who continuously use and abuse heroin get a numbed sense of tolerance requiring them to increase their intake continually. Either snorted as a powder, injected intravenously or into the muscles or smoked through tinfoil, heroin can be rapidly absorbed by the brain’s pleasure center and blocks its ability to distinguish pain.

Heroin is technically considered as a downer or a depressant because the initial euphoric state is followed by a fit of grogginess that switches between a drowsy state and wakefulness. A “high” person manifests constricted pupils, fading in and out of consciousness, slowed breathing, and episodes of nausea and vomiting. Though these manifestations are momentary, the long-term effects are much more severe and physically debilitating.

Without proper intervention, a heroin addict experiences collapsed veins due to constant venial injections, heart infections, swollen tissue with abscess formation, gastrointestinal cramping, and liver or kidney disease.

Complications are also much more serious in people suffering from heroin addiction because of their debilitated immune functions. Pulmonary complications due to pneumonia and other vascular diseases normally occur in people who have neglected their health. Breathing problems caused by inhalation of the substance also develop in the long run. The most serious condition a heroin addict can go through includes fatal overdose which often leads to premature death.

Can Regulated Marijuana Help Lessen Heroin Addiction:

There are a growing number of studies pointing to the role of regulated marijuana to inhibit the use of an addictive opiate. Cannabis is seen to promote the body’s resilience to various deadly diseases, but can also act as a substitute for opiate medications. Controlled marijuana can be consumed as edibles or in capsule forms, smoked, or vaporized to treat discomforts and pains.

Cannabis can also be used together with opiates to make an opiate medication more effective and lessen its dosage to a safer level. In such a way that medical marijuana strengthens the effects of smaller doses of opiate medication, experts see this path as a safe way to lessen or prevent heroin addiction in the future.

Theoretically, cannabis works on the same level of activity on the brain’s reward system. It has still had the salient effect, but not as abrupt and damaging as heroin. Based on data gathered from the Federal and State healthcare coverage companies, there was a foreseen drop of around 14.5% on patients who necessitated the use of opioid medication.

This burgeon of discrepancy amongst those who once used opioid drugs was far greater in states where patients had access to medical marijuana dispensaries and much more noticeable in states which allowed the cultivation of cannabis in their homes.

With morphine-based drugs like fentanyl, oxycodone, and methadone, alternatives like cannabis can help patients deal with chronic pain. Instead of using highly addictive substances like opiate-based medications, people can get the same therapeutic effects of medical marijuana.

Studies have also proven that patients who were once taking prescribed opiate-based drugs ceased to experience the discomforts of their conditions after smoking controlled quantities of marijuana or tried to incorporate low levels of CBD and THC in their cooking.

If you want to join this medical revolution, Cannabis Twenty-Four Seven helps you get in touch with affiliates and firm believers in the power of cannabis around the world. Join the bandwagon of active cannabis advocates and be a game-changer.

Charles Watson
@charleswatson00