Nobody makes the decision to quit drugs lightly. In fact, it often takes a lot of loss for people to realize that they need help. But if you’re here and looking to start your recovery, we want you to know that you are on the right path.
If you have decided that you are ready to stop abusing drugs and begin a life of recovery, then it’s important that you start off on the right foot. While you may feel tempted to detox at home, enrolling in a drug detox program can drastically improve your odds of staying in recovery. Read on to learn more about our medical detox and why you need help detoxing from drugs.
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Drug detox is a highly individualized process. Your experience with detoxing will vary depending on your physical health, your drug(s) of choice, and how often you used drugs. But across all of these differences, if you need to detox from prescription opioids, heroin, or benzodiazepines, then you cannot safely detox at home.
Many people think that they will quit drugs by going “cold turkey,” or suddenly quitting. And while that’s an admirable attitude, you should know that the side effects of drug withdrawals can range from uncomfortable to life-threatening.
Some of these symptoms of withdrawals include:
In most cases, drug withdrawal symptoms last for several days. This means that even in cases that are not life-threatening, there is a real danger that you will relapse to make the uncomfortable and frightening symptoms go away. This is why most at-home detoxes fail, and it’s the kind of situation that we avoid with our individualized drug detox treatment plans.
At Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital, the medical professionals on our care staff work to ease you through the withdrawal process. Our team of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers run a welcoming, effective inpatient detox that will prepare you for long-term recovery.
In our detox program, you will be medically supervised 24/7. This will include frequent comfort check-ins and constant monitoring of your vital signs. If the drug withdrawals become too much for you, our physicians may prescribe medication to keep you comfortable and safe during detox. This is called medication assisted treatment (MAT), and it can keep you safe and in recovery during this vulnerable time.
For example, at our addiction treatment center, patients detoxing from opioids may receive Suboxone (buprenorphine), or a patient experiencing benzodiazepine withdrawals may receive Serax (oxazepam). These medications can help patients get through withdrawals and keep them safe during detox. Additional medications may be prescribed on a case-by-case basis to treat withdrawal symptoms. And as part of our responsibility to our patients, we only administer medications after carefully consider the patient’s health and how MAT can help them reach their recovery goals.
While drug detox can do wonderful things for your recovery, substance abuse treatment does not stop here. After completing our inpatient detox, you may enroll in our dual diagnosis program for substance abuse and mental health treatment, then our intensive outpatient program as a follow-up to an inpatient treatment program. Remember, treating the mental aspects of addiction is just as important as treating the physical side.
Whether you’re suffering from addiction to drugs or alcohol, you can always quit. All you need is help from the right addiction center. At Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital, we proudly serve the communities in Louisiana and southern Mississippi. That’s why we take most major insurances and Louisiana medicaid.
Do you have questions about our drug detox programming? You can reach our admissions specialists at Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital: (225) 567-8698 or by filling out a confidential contact form. If you are ready to begin your lifelong recovery, the first step is reaching out for the help you need.
