Rehab Healthcare (Rehab HC) is a leading drug and alcohol addiction treatment service in the UK. We offer confidential addiction advice and arrange cost-effective residential rehab treatment for anyone suffering from any form of addiction, whether it be you, a family member or a friend. We are committed to helping you find the best UK addiction treatment centers and rehab clinics.
You might be on cloud nine now that you are pregnant. You have just confirmed, and you know the exact words your gynecologist might suggest. Stop smoking or stop drinking! Right? Fine. But if you have been suffering from anxiety for a long, you might also be taking medicines to control the same. Benzodiazepines are the medicines you might be taking as prescription drugs.
Mention the same to your gynecologist, and you will find more words of caution flowing in for you and your baby. It is not surprising if you get the recommendation to go for the Benzodiazepines detox before even conceiving. Why? What is so critical about this drug, and what makes its detox a priority? Let us throw some light on it before you plan to conceive.
Defining Benzodiazepines
To start with, Benzodiazepines are a special class of drugs ideally for treating several conditions from anxiety to insomnia to seizures. It works by impacting the neurotransmitters in the brain and on the chemicals. The researchers feel that the Benzodiazepines help reduce all sorts of activities in the nerves like GABA.
GABA or Gamma-Aminobutyric acid is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, and it works by blocking or inhibiting the brain’s signals. Benzodiazepines are also popular as drugs for sedation ahead of operations as general anesthesia and for helping in alcohol withdrawal recovery.
The market has various versions of Benzodiazepines like Oxazepam, Valium, Xanax, and more. These are quite popular worldwide too. The problem arises with the drugs is the way it impacts your overall health. Hence, these days, you will come across UK Addiction treatment centers urging you to cleans the system right away.
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room – should pregnant women continue having these drugs?
What Should You Know First?
Ideally no. Benzodiazepine has side effects, and even the fetus might feel the same. The effects might take over the fetus right from the first trimester. Consult with your drug rehab or alcohol treatment center like Rehab Healthcare. The consultants and doctors will firstly want to know the drugs you have been taking to treat anxiety or insomnia. If your medicine for these contains any trace of Benzodiazepines, he or she would recommend you to taper off. This means you will need to stop taking these drugs slowly. It might take a few days to a few weeks before someone can come off the effects of these drugs.
At this point, the side effects might start that could include dizziness, loss of orientation, and headache. The feeling of depression or sleeplessness will dominate your life. If you have been taking these drugs for a long time, stopping them suddenly is impossible without help or therapy. There would be a need to watch out for seizures, muscle cramps, depression, tremors, and sweating. The best treatment is only by tapering off as it diminishes the effects during the withdrawal phase.
These are for regular patients. What about the fetus in the case of pregnant women, and how do the Benzodiazepines affect?
The fetus might experience side effects along with the mom-to-be who is taking Benzodiazepines. They may include feelings of grogginess, slurred speech, depression, vision problems, and headaches. Newborns may suffer from breathing problems or dizziness.
How to Recover from the Benzo Addiction?
If your friend is planning to conceive and takes Benzodiazepines-based drugs, take her to a doctor. The doctor who recommended the medicine in the first place will offer her ways to taper off. You may alternatively take her to Rehab Healthcare. It is a reputed UK-based clinic offering treatment for de-addiction in various forms. From helping people detox from alcoholism to drugs, including Benzo, they help you extensively. Besides consulting the patient, they will also help by suggesting them through psychological counseling. These have a great impact and will witness a positive change over a few sittings.
People might take time to withdraw, and it ranges from a few hours to a few weeks and varies from one person to the other. The first few hours, they may experience anxiety within 6 to 8 hours. In 1 to 4 days, they may feel enhanced discomfort due to increased anxiety and sleeplessness. This phase might continue from 5 to 14 days, and the withdrawal peak in this phase and after 4 weeks, the feelings fade.
Some may even face Protracted Withdrawal symptoms or PAWS. The Benzodiazepine detox may even require rehabilitation for someone with severe dependence. After women come clean from this dependence, they can think of starting a family afresh and conceive.
There are elaborate steps women have to take if they are serious about conceiving and want to get back to their normal life from the dependence on Benzodiazepines. Your journey to normal life will begin if you consult the best like Rehab Healthcare.
Morphine or Semi-synthetic opioid diacetylmorphine has been around for long as heroin. Its easy availability from poppy seeds has made it more dangerous than ever. However, while poppy seeds may have lesser intensity, heroin is stronger and creates the ‘rush’ in blood and brain.
Every year thousands succumb to the effects of heroin; the addiction to it is by itself a relapse offering negative behavioral changes. Heroin abuse has been a concern. If you find someone smoking or inhaling or even injecting it regularly, make sure to take them to a reputed heroin/opiate detox center.
How Heroin Works?
While getting infected from a dirty needle is high through injecting heroin, the chance of overdose is also equally high. Heroin works on the brain neurotransmitters at great speed. Just snort it once or twice to become an addict.
The feeling of happiness rushes through the brain and can last a few hours as the world around moves at a slower pace. Heroin slows the heart rate and reduces the body from getting pain messages.
Many medicines like oxycodone also contain chemicals in the same family as heroin. Though they are prescription drugs, overdose is quite common. Death due to overdosing on heroin is at an all-time high and so if your friend or family member is already taking these, take note immediately. Go for opiate detox for them to come out of it.
What are the chances for recovery, and can someone come out of it? Let us check the path to recovery.
Steps to Improve Chances for Recovery from Heroin Addiction
Relapse Percentage in Recovery
Relapse will be recurrent and is chronic. So, staying sober will not be easy. Around 60% of people face relapse, and it is common. This is not just your friend or your family member who is facing it. Also, it does not mean failure to stay sober. It means changing the course of action or taking another treatment method. Remember, there are plenty of methods available, and if you visit London-based Rehab Healthcare, you will notice some change for the better. They will customize the treatment plan as per the patient and their needs.
Success Percentage
You may opt for a detox-only option or outpatient program, or short or long-term rehab care. It depends on the level of addiction before one could opt for one of the above treatment programs.
Rapid Detox Option: This method includes just a consultation to understand the level of addiction. Here, you may even recommend the diet to follow to maintain a healthy life without dependence on drugs. The duration of this treatment might just be 5 days, and it can include stopping the heroin consumption followed by sedation just to prevent any withdrawals from happening.
Naltrexone Implants: But the best addition to this treatment would be by adding a Naltrexone implant. This effectively reverses the effects of heroin on the body. However, the effects would last for six months, after which there would be a need to replenish the implant. The only drawback to this rapid detox plan is the speed of relapse. To ensure a longer impact, you would need rehab.
Medication and Rehabilitation: This is plan B of your treatment. If you want to get the best in treatment and recover faster, successfully, opt for rehabs like Rehab Healthcare is the ideal choice. They would go for an opiate replacement to give you medicines as a substitute to replace the heroin. Methadone is the most common choice of medication. But for it to work, you would need to stay at the rehab clinic under the watchful eyes of the doctors.
This rehabilitation will last for a few days. The short-term inpatient treatment should ideally follow up with therapy. That said, a long-term rehabilitee is the most effective.
The Best Long-Term approach: If you seek the best private rehabilitation clinics in the UK, contact Rehab HC. The rehab program will come with 24-hour support and with the help of a therapeutic community. The stay can be from 6 to 12 months as per the NIDA rules. The methadone treatment would continue for a year. The TC would do its best at bringing you to normalcy and into society. The doctors might recommend you to have Naloxone, Naltrexone, Buprenorphine, and more, among the medicines.
Trust the Therapies: Therapies are often great components of any detox program. From cognitive-behavioral therapy to family and motivational therapy, you can benefit inherently.
The ultimate opiate detox is possible only when you combine all of these steps or take the most effective ones. They will help detoxify the body and completely cleanse the body of the drugs like heroin.
Sometimes, we take things too lightly for our good. This is exactly how people get into the habit of taking cannabis. People often consider that just taking some of the cannabis is harmless and will not cause any problem. This perspective is the cause of all downfall, and before long, people are knee-deep into addiction.
To start with, regular and long-term use of cannabis can have a deep and irreversible impact on the psychological and cognitive behavior of the users. With the passing of days, people are innovating more in this regard and have come up with the more potent form of cannabis like ‘Skunk’. This is 3 times stronger and can cause long-lasting damage to the brain of the users. In the UK, you may get the best treatments for all levels of addiction from Rehab Healthcare, a clinic offering holistic de-addiction programs.
The problem with cannabis addiction is that it is legal to use it for medical purposes in many regions. In the UK, for instance, it is illegal to possess, grow, or sell. But in the USA, across many states, growing and possessing cannabis or hash for recreational or personal use is legal. This said, the use of cannabis is highly debatable, and we shall now check what damages it can do to the body and mind.
The Damage Marijuana Consumption does to You
It may tamper with how the brain processes the information and cause your brain cells to release the happy chemical dopamine. It may even cause you to lose memory or make you lose balance. Hallucination is another side effect of cannabis, and heavy use can cause dependence. It can cause the heart to palpitate and keep the heart rate very high (20% higher approximately) for very long too. Such problems cause a few symptoms and if you are a concerned person, check for the symptoms. It could be bloodshot eyes, or irritability, lack of interest in socializing, memory loss, panic attacks, and more.
Now, we shall see what other severe complications would arise from the long-term consumption.
1. Lung Damage
The smoke from cannabis is by far the most dangerous as it has around 50 carcinogens. This directly impacts the lungs and can even cause cancer, though there is not much clinical research to support this. Exposure can cause many other problems to the lungs like pneumonia and bronchitis.
2. Cognitive Impairments
Many studies imply that the long-term use of marijuana can impair cognitive abilities. How long has the person been taking cannabis, and from what age – all these factors add to the condition. The effects of cannabis on speech and processing information slowly are serious problems resulting from the use. However, many other factors add to this condition: alcohol dependence or poor mental state due to depression. If one has been taking marijuana since adolescent years, they would have a lower IQ too.
3. Chronic Psychosis
A big implication of consuming marijuana for the long term can cause schizophrenia. The regular use of marijuana can result in a higher risk of anxiety or depression. As per the studies, after two hours of consuming, the THC levels go down in the blood, thereby causing a drop in happiness. In short, it may cause people to feel more anxious or depressed. This leads them to take more drugs to beat that feeling.
4. Poor Operational Abilities
Regular use and for the long term can lead to a poor sense of stability and coordination. It causes them difficulty in driving safely. They may even have poor memory, thereby finding it difficult to know where they are or what they are doing.
5. Damage to Reproduction System
Researches claim that there is damage to the male testosterone, aka the reproductive system. This is as per the tests done on animals and humans. The impact is visible on the sperm’s ability to move as it appears to slow down after the long-term use of THC. Men also may experience testicular cancer as per the research done on long-term consumption of cannabis. Even in females, the use of marijuana lowers progesterone and estrogen levels. Thereby, it directly damages the fertility of males and females. Moreover, in women, the impact goes deep to damage the fetus’s growth with time.
6. Hallucinations and Nausea
People consuming marijuana for the long-term also experience dizziness and vomiting. They develop hallucinations and feel nausea from time to time. This is as per the study done by National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Treatments on Hand
For the ultimateprivate rehabilitation clinics in the UK, contact Rehab HC. This is the best you can do to help your friend or family member who shows any visible symptoms and is becoming a recluse slowly. They might recover faster with all the help they can get in time. If they are dependent on the drugs for long, they may need immediate consulting and rehab therapies. So, consult with the best doctors now and save a life!
