Most people assume that
the only types of people who go to medical detox
are drug addicts. When many
people think of drug addicts, they get visions of
people lying in dingy rooms with needles in their
arms and blank faces. They think
that drug addicts never bathe, don't hold jobs and
live off of welfare and crime. You see
drug addicts in the soup line at a church, don't
you?
When they hear that a drug addict is going
to medical detox, they assume that the reason for
it is that the court said it was either medical
detox or jail.
However, this
conception of drug addicts and the people who go
to medical detox is an example of what humorist
Will Rogers meant when he said, "It isn't what we
don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we
know that ain't so."
In fact, most of the
people coming to Novus for medical detox look just
like your accountant or your lawyer, your doctor
or even your mother, brother or father. They dress
well. They are well groomed. They have
responsible, well-paying jobs or are
students.
They love and support their families. They are
not on street drugs and would not have any idea
how to buy illegal drugs or where to find
them.
Their drug dealer is
not in a dark alley but in a modern building in a
nice medical office. Most
of the people who come to medical detox at Novus
are physically dependent on or addicted to drugs
prescribed by medical doctors. Most
doctors don't just hand out addictive drugs so
their patients can get high. No, the
reason they prescribe these addictive drugs is to
control pain caused by an injury or accident.
Many of us have had our
wisdom teeth pulled or another type of operation
or injury and have suffered severe
pain.
Our natural pain killers, the endorphins,
are not produced in enough quantity to lower the
pain and we just hurt. We
wanted to take something that would let us escape
in sleep and when we wake up maybe the pain will
be gone.
When we woke up and
still had pain, we wanted something that would
allow us to reduce the pain and still let us go to
work or take care of our family. Our doctor
prescribed painkillers like OxyContin or
Vicodin. We
may have been warned that the drug was strong, but
we were probably not informed by our doctor that
the drug actually was an opiate that acted just
like heroin and was just as
addictive.
Maybe in our case, the
pain lessened and was gone in a few days and we
stopped taking the addictive drugs and never
experienced any withdrawal symptoms. However,
for many others, their metabolism and DNA are
different and maybe even if their pain is
lessening they have become physically dependent on
the drug.
If they try to stop taking the drug, they
have withdrawal symptoms-sweating, diarrhea,
nausea, high fever and joint pain that can put
them in bed for a week or more. The pain
of withdrawal is not an option and they continue
to take the opiates even though the pain, the
original reason for the opiate, is not
there.
Others may not become
physically dependent as easily, but when they try
to stop taking the opiates they find the pain is
still there and the only way to control it is to
continue taking the opiates for several weeks
more.
After several weeks they know that they
should stop taking the opiate because they know it
is not good for them and they don't want to become
a drug addict. However,
by this time they have also become physically
dependent and possibly even addicted because they
crave the feeling provided by the
painkillers.
Medical doctors will
often continue to prescribe painkillers for both
of the above groups. If one
doctor decides that they won't continue, there
always seems to be another doctor or a pain clinic
that will prescribe the drugs. Some
people's metabolism and DNA do not allow them to
build up a tolerance to the drug that requires
higher and higher doses to have the same
feeling.
However, like most heroin or methadone
users, most users develop a tolerance to the
original dose and it must be continually increased
until the user begins losing the ability to
function normally in
life.
At some point, many of
these opiate users determine that they have to
regain control of their lives and may try to lower
the dosage of the opiates on their own. However,
they will go through the same type of withdrawal
as heroin addicts and few will be successful. In fact,
less than five percent of opiate users can
successfully do a cold turkey withdrawal. After a
day or so they are again taking the
opiates.
The user feels trapped
and is naturally anxious and depressed about their
addiction.
They may be referred to a
psychiatrist. Instead of
the psychiatrist explaining that their anxiety and
depression are natural and the real problem is
that they need to detox from the opiate, the person
normally leaves the psychiatrist's office with a
prescription for at least one unneeded
anti-depressant like Effexor or a dangerous
benzodiazepine like Xanax or sometimes one or more
anti-depressants along with a benzodiazepine.
Combining
anti-depressants and benzodiazepines with opiates,
again depending on the individual's metabolism,
can create further problems and cause the person
to experience one or more of the more damaging
side effects of the
drugs.
This is the type of
person that we are seeing at Novus. They want
to withdraw but want to do their withdrawal more
safely and comfortably and under medical
supervision.
At Novus we are able to help them get off
not only the opiate but any other drug that is not
needed.
They normally complete their detox in a
week and we don't send them home on two or three
new drugs.
The fact that they are
now off the opiate and think clearly for the first
time since they started taking the opiate is to
many of our patients a miracle. Many
comment that, "I have my life back." To Novus
we see these "miracles" every day and wonder why
other detox facilities don't seem to get the same
results.
At Novus we specialize in
giving people their lives
back.
