Heroin Addiction Detox Aftercare programs play a very important role in keeping a patient who has gone through detox or rehab from relapsing. There are many different types of after care programs, usually referred to as outpatient programs. Some involve just substance abuse counseling or drug counseling, others involve group therapies and they can vary from once a week to five days a week. While in aftercare programs patients can be on the methadone program, suboxone, or many other types of medication to help them stay clean until they can get a start in the right direction.

Heroin Addiction and detox are usually not enough for the patient to make it and not relapse because detox is usually a few short days. Over the years health insurances are not willing to pay for very long when it comes to inpatient drug or substance abuse rehabilitation. This leaves the patient to make it on their own after detox.

Depending upon how much and how long a patient has been abusing heroin or other opiates will determine what type of aftercare treatment program will best benefit the individual. Part of the role in detox is to set the patient up with the correct aftercare and contact the facility so that upon their release from detox they can attend right away.

There is regular substance abuse counseling where the patient will attend one or two sessions a week with a substance abuse counselor. Once the patient has some time away from the heroin they will begin to lead a normal life and have safeguards in place to help them from relapsing, such as AA or Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.

There is also group therapy where there are sessions held with multiple patients who help each other out in a group session. This can occur anywhere from one to five days a week. Most time this is coupled with counseling sessions and called intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment. Patients are usually encouraged to attend AA or NA meetings as well.

With the help of these aftercare programs once a patient has detoxed from heroin is very important and adds to the success of patients not relapsing.

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Heroin Addiction treatment with suboxone has been very successful over the past few years, and only recently has been used in the United States as a detoxification medicine. Suboxone is combination of buprenorphine and buprenorphine HCI and naloxone HCI dihydrate. Buprenorphine was originally to control pain ‘Subutex’ (without the naloxone) and was available as an injectable drug though out the United States. It has been used as an opiate detoxification medication through out Europe since the middle 1980’s and was available in the form of a tablet.

Suboxone comes as a sublingual (dissolves under the tounge) orange tablet in the shape of a hexagon. It ratio of 4:1 Suboxone: Naloxone. The naloxone was added to deter addicts from abusing suboxone as an injectable drug. If an addict tries to inject suboxone they would become very sick because the naloxone removes opiates from the receptors causing withdrawls.

Suboxone is not a full opiate and is partial agonist therefore making it impossible to overdose on. This renders the drug as a safe way to detox from heroin or other opiates and in turn regular liscenced physicians can prescribe this medicine to their patients to keep at home. In addition the drug will block any opiates the addict may try to use so they cannot feel the drugs effects. This enables the addict to get back on track fairly quickly if they should have a relapse.
Unlike its counterpart methadone, suboxone is much easier for opiate dependants to detox safely and without suffering the effects of withdrawl fairly quickly. Suboxone can be used as a maintenance treatment in which the addict stays on the drug for an extended period of time eliminating the need to return to their opiate addiction. Heroin Addiction Treatments with methadone can work well for most opiate addicts but the problem is getting them off of the methadone. Methadone is usually used as a maintenance treatment.

Suboxone comes in 2mg, 4mg, and 8mg tablets making it easy for doctors to prescibe amounts that are necessary and then to eventually decrease the suboxone until the a is completely off of the suboxone and opiate free. You may also want to take a look at methadone treatment as way of treating an opiate or heroin addiction.

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