Heroin Detox at a Private Rehab Clinic

Do you find yourself in the midst of a heroin addiction? If so, you already know that the drug you are using is making a mess of your life. First, we want to congratulate you for making the effort to investigate your treatment options. Second, we invite you to contact us to learn more about undergoing heroin detox and rehab at a private, residential clinic. We believe residential clinics offer heroin addicts the best possible chances of recovery.

We will explain why our first preference is to help clients find an appropriate residential treatment. But before we get to that, there are other options available for heroin detox:

• NHS treatment
• Private outpatient treatment
• Home detox.

Each of these options is chosen by heroin addicts and their families for a variety of reasons. For example, NHS treatment is often the first choice because it is available for free. There are no out-of-pocket expenses involved. As for the other two options, we will not address them here given that they are not used as often as residential and NHS treatments.

Heroin Detox: Full vs Partial Withdrawal

In explaining why we believe heroin detox is better at a private rehab clinic, we will be comparing private clinics to the NHS. Please bear in mind that this is not an exercise in criticising the NHS. With all due respect, they do the best they can with the resources they have. We just believe that private rehab clinics do a better job.

With that said, NHS heroin treatment tends to rely heavily on methadone as a prescription medication to ease withdrawal from heroin. But it is largely ineffective because of the way it is used. Rather than bringing heroin addicts into a controlled setting where they will be given methadone and medically supervised throughout withdrawal, doctors prescribe methadone and send patients home in the hope that they will stop using heroin by themselves. This is really just a partial withdrawal.

The problem with partial withdrawal is that it is never complete. Everywhere we look, we see cases of heroin addicts who stopped using heroin years ago because they have been getting methadone from the NHS. They aren’t free from drug addiction; they just found that the government would be their supplier without charging them anything.

Private rehab clinics don’t work that way. Their goal is to help drug addicts become completely drug-free. That means no heroin, no methadone, and nothing else. Their goal is full withdrawal followed by effective psychotherapeutic treatments. Private rehab clinics are not interested in partial withdrawal and long-term methadone substitution.

Immediate Treatment in Most Cases

The second thing to consider with private rehab is that access is immediate in most cases. In other words, your average private clinic tends to have at least one or two beds open at all times. With just a phone call, we can help a client arrange treatment that can begin within 24 to 48 hours. That kind of immediate access is generally not available through the NHS.

As we said, the NHS does the best it can with the resources it has. But a lack of sufficient resources means that NHS treatment programmes tend to be terribly oversubscribed. People in need of heroin rehab are routinely put on waiting lists to receive that treatment. In the meantime, they are given methadone as a substitute drug. And we have already discussed the problem with that strategy.

Concentrated and Customised Treatment

Private rehab clinics have another advantage over the NHS in that they can provide both concentrated and customised treatment. Treatment is concentrated in the sense that rehab clinics are able to focus all of their energies on addiction recovery because that’s all they do. The NHS has to deal with every injury and illness imaginable. Their resources are spread thin as a result.

In terms of customised treatment, the big difference with private rehab clinics is that they do not utilise a one-size-fits-all treatment for everyone. Every client is evaluated both physically and psychologically prior to the commencement of treatment. Doctors and therapists use those evaluations to design bespoke treatment plans unique to individual patients. The plans are adjusted as needed during the treatment period.

The NHS approach to heroin rehab is to write a methadone prescription and instruct the patient to seek out counselling and a support group. That’s it. Such a simplistic approach would be wonderful if it worked, but it doesn’t. Addicts need treatments that coincide with their health, family circumstances, histories, and so on. Private rehab clinics excel in this area.

A More Conducive Environment

Private clinics offer both outpatient and residential programmes for most of the addictions they treat. It has been our experience that residential programmes are better, especially where hard drugs like heroin are concerned. Residential treatment offers an environment that is extremely conducive to full recovery.

To better understand this, imagine trying to treat someone with malaria. The ideal situation would be to provide the medication and good nutrition necessary to combat the disease while, at the same time, removing the patient from the environment where he or she caught the disease. It would be foolish to write the patient a prescription and send him/her right back out into a malaria-infested environment.

Heroin rehab is very similar. Outpatient programmes can provide limited treatment to recovering addicts. But those same people go right back to their homes and neighbourhoods. They go right back to the same environments that enabled their addictions to begin with. It’s like sending a malaria patient back out into the rainforest.

In a residential setting, the recovering addict lives at the facility for up to 12 weeks. The facility is a drug-free environment that offers everything the addict needs for recovery. It’s just a better way to do things.

The point of heroin detox and rehab is to help the addict stop using drugs permanently. That’s what we’re all about. If you are ready for rehab yourself, contact us for more information.