How does heroin affect the brain? What treatment is best?
If you or someone you love is struggling with Heroin addiction, it’s crucial to understand how heroin affects the brain and why professional treatment is a necessity. With Liberty House Recovery Center, you can find individualized inpatient treatment using medication-assisted detox for your recovery, giving you the best chance at long-term success.
What Drug Class of Drug is Heroin?
Heroin is considered an opioid. Opioids are a class of drugs, both legal and illegal. Legal versions include prescriptions like morphine and Fentanyl. Morphine is a natural version of opioids derived from the poppy plant, while Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. Heroin is an illegal street version that is not used for medicinal purposes.
How Does Heroin Affect the Brain?
What does heroin do to the brain? How does heroin affect the brain differently from other drugs?
Your brain has natural opioid receptors. When you experience pain, your body creates opioid chemicals naturally, and these chemicals bind to the opioid receptors. Naturally occurring opioid chemicals in your brain are short-lived and don’t help with chronic pain, just acute pain.
The part of the brain that heroin affects is the same part of the brain.
When you use heroin, the heroin binds to the same opioid receptors. The part of the brain that heroin affects is the part that releases dopamine. Dopamine helps you feel more relaxed and helps to reduce feelings of pain. When you exercise, for example, your body might release dopamine that binds to those opioid receptors and temporarily masks the pain you might feel from lifting heavy weights or running a long distance, and then at the same time, you feel high like a runner’s high.
This is all short-lived when it occurs naturally. But with heroin, it’s much more intense, and it lasts much longer. When the heroin wears off, you feel intense cravings to replicate that same high and reduced pain sensation.
Contact our luxury detox center in Michigan to learn more about overcoming opioid addiction today.
How Addictive is Heroin?
Historically heroin was once used as a prescription painkiller, but that was outlawed at the beginning of the 20th century because of how addictive it was.
Heroin is highly addictive, such that anyone who uses heroin regularly will develop a tolerance, and continued abuse will result in a substance use disorder. Withdrawal symptoms can be severe and begin within a few hours from the last dose.
It is heroin withdrawal symptoms that have led to the phrases “cold turkey” in light of the cold flashes and goosebumps that people experience and “kicking the habit” in light of the uncontrollable leg kicking and muscle spasms.
Long-term heroin addiction damages the brain. Researchers have found that areas of the white matter are diminished with continued heroin abuse. That same white matter directly inhibits your ability to:
- Make sound decisions
- Control your behavior
- And respond well to stress
With the right treatment center, this damage can be reversed.
How to Find an Inpatient Heroin Rehab and Detox Center in Michigan
Detoxing from heroin is very dangerous and should be done with professional help. If you need help finding an inpatient heroin rehab and detox center, reach out to Liberty House. Liberty House Recovery Center offers quality heroin addiction treatment in Michigan.
With Liberty House Recovery Center, you can get heroin detox with medication management using opioid agonists that help fill the parts of your brain where heroin would normally attach. These medications help to ease the intensity of your withdrawal symptoms. Doctors have to work with you individually to tape how much you use until your brain chemistry is normalized. Our Michigan luxury drug and alcohol treatment center is a fully licensed medical facility with doctors and nurses on site twenty-four hours per day.
Heroin abuse can lead to chronic health issues like changes in mental health, resulting in depression or anxiety. With our facility, you can participate in dual diagnosis services that involve individual, group, and family therapy to meet your needs best. The individualized program you receive provides treatment to help you overcome any co-occurring mental health and heroin addiction disorders.
Reach out to Liberty House Recovery Center to learn more. Contact us today to learn more about our Michigan drug treatment center.