Detoxing from Heroin

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Detoxing from heroin is not an easy thing. Heroin abuse and addiction is a serious problem and it is not really something you should try to detox from at home alone. When detoxing from heroin the physical symptoms start very quickly, much quicker than it does for other opiates. If at all possible, you should try to go to a detox center or at least speak to your doctor about things you can do to make it a little easier on yourself.

As the symptoms of withdrawal begin, you will start experiencing sleeplessness, anxiety, and sneezing. This passes and moves on to the more severe symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, shaking chills, muscle aches and pains.

Heroin detox is not an easy thing to go through. There is medication available to help you. Your doctor or the detox center can give you medication for the nausea and vomiting, anxiety and other withdrawal symptoms. Methadone is also a drug that is widely used in heroin detox. It is a drug that works in your body the same as heroin but does not give you the "high" that heroin does. Under close medical supervision, this can replace heroin for an addict and it can be slowly decreased over a period of weeks and months so the addict becomes "clean" without the horrible side effects of withdrawal.

If you are doing you own detox at home keep in mind that the worst of the effects of withdrawal will go away after about seven days. The sleeplessness, muscle cramping, anxiety and diarrhea last much longer. It is common for those symptoms to remain for as long as three weeks.

If you are detoxing at home with the help of your doctor, or just going it alone remember that there are many overt the counter drugs that you can use to help alleviate the symptoms of withdrawal. Tylenol or and Ibuprofen type anti-inflammatory is good to take for the muscle aches and cramping. Some doctors say to alternate between the two every four hours. You could also take 50 mg of Benadryl every four hours. This will help somewhat with the anxiety and will make you a little sleepy too.

Sleep is actually your friend when you are going through detox, at home or in a detox unit. When you are asleep, you are not in pain but you are still moving along with your detox. Try to sleep as much as you can. Just make sure not to take too much medication to make you sleep and don't take anything that isn't over the counter. Benadryl 50mg every four hours is the best thing to take.

If you find you cannot sleep just stay up and you'll sleep later. Your body needs to catch up eventually and if you time it right, you will sleep through the worst part of the withdrawal.