Hydromorphone - Treatment for Habitual Users

Treatment for Habitual Users

Narcotics addiction is extremely difficult to overcome. Abusers of powerful opiates such as hydromorphone often need to be hospitalized in a rehabilitation clinic, sometimes for as long as thirty days. Attempting to quit the drug without medical assistance can lead to a host of withdrawal symptoms, including uncontrolled muscle spasms, cramps, diarrhea, sweating, clammy skin, anxiety and panic attacks, nausea, and a prolonged period of depression. Often the addict just caves in and goes looking for the drug again.

Under a doctor's care, the hydromorphone abuser might receive methadone, another opiate that controls withdrawal symptoms without producing a "high." (A separate entry on methadone is available in this encyclopedia.) Patients should also undergo counseling. Some are prescribed anxiety-relieving medications. Nonprofit organizations like Narcotics Anonymous (NA) provide support from other recovering addicts through a twelve-step program of regular meetings, a telephone hotline, and a "buddy system" that pairs newcomers with successfully drug-free members.

Many recovering addicts discover that the drug abuse has so altered their lifestyles that they literally need to "begin again" with a new life. Drug abusers trying to go straight are always counseled to end friendships that developed around the abusive lifestyle, to avoid the places they went to purchase or steal drugs, and to seek new social and professional contacts. This can prove particularly difficult for those in the health care industry—the doctors, nurses, and other medical support staff—who abuse painkillers.

Addiction to opiates does not end when the withdrawal symptoms ease. The brain rebounds from its altered chemistry by undergoing a lengthy period of adjustment. Recovering addicts may feel bad—depressed, anxious, joyless—for months or even years. It is this ongoing dysphoriaPronounced diss-FOR-ee-yuh; an abnormal feeling of anxiety, discontent, or discomfort; the opposite of euphoria. that sends some addicts back into drug abuse. Also, it is this syndrome that self-help groups such as Narcotics Anonymous try to combat.