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The Hard Facts About Rapid Detox |
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Monday, 11 June 2007 |
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A common misconception is that for a drug to be an opiate it must be opium. In fact, opiate drugs are those derived from opium and encompass a large number of street drugs and pharmaceutical products on the market today, including heroine, codeine, Vicodin, OxyContin, methadone, morphine, fentanyl, Percocet, Lortab, Darvocet, Dilaudid and Norco. Addiction to opiate drugs has become a plague upon civilization as the use of these drugs for the use of controlling the pain resulting from injury, surgical treatments or other medical conditions has dramatically increased.
For users of these drugs the detoxification process can be its own special type of hell. The unpleasantness of this process has caused many drug users to look to rapid detox as a preferable solution. Rapid detox is precisely what it sounds like; an accelerated detoxification process which quickly rids the body of any remnants of the drug. Unlike normal detoxification, which can be done in a detox facility, rapid detox is generally done in a hospital under anesthesia and overseen by a nurse and licensed anesthesiologist.Prior to the detoxification process a patient is admitted into the hospital and undergoes a complete physical. They are then placed under anesthesia and given medication to speed the withdrawal process, which usually lasts four to six hours. While these medications are in the body they work to block the drug receptors in the brain, causing the body to expel the toxins released by the drug rather than absorbing them. This leads to the body being detoxified much more quickly, and since the patient is placed under general anesthesia they are spared the hideous and potentially dangerous side effects associated with withdrawal from these drugs. While the rapid detoxification process is considered safe for most patients there has been some concern regarding possible cardiac complications. All patients attempting to enter a rapid detoxification program are urged to be completely honest with their physicians regarding any previous health problems, particularly those that may pertain to the cardiovascular system. |
