In any given year, millions of people in communities across America will misuse a medication prescribed to them or someone else. Inevitably, that figure includes many residents of greater Los Angeles. Misuse of a prescription drug is the typical starting point for later problems with addiction and serious substance abuse. To maximize your chances of recovering from these problems, you need prescription drug detox in Los Angeles. Professional detox services provide you with a clear roadmap to halting your medication misuse.
Need prescription drug detox in the greater Los Angeles area? Call on the experts at DetoxLA. We specialize in helping people from all walks of life halt their use of addictive medications. In doing so, we also help ensure that you take the essential steps required to pursue your long-term recovery goals. Contact our Los Angeles drug and alcohol detox center today to learn more.
Prescription Drug Misuse Basics
Misuse is a potential risk for anyone who takes medication that contains an addictive ingredient. You take part in it if you engage in behaviors such as:
- Increasing your medication doses without your doctor’s knowledge and approval
- Shortening the time between medication doses in the same circumstances
- Using medication that a doctor did not prescribe to you
- Taking any action that intensifies the drug effects of a given dose of medication
- Turning to a medication as a source of recreation, not a source of symptom relief
By a substantial margin, opioid-based prescription painkillers are the most common targets of medication misuse. Also in the top three are benzodiazepine sedatives and stimulants—an almost equal number of Americans misuse medications in each of these categories.
Want to know more about prescription drug misuse? DetoxLA’s knowledgeable staff is available to help you.
Prescription Drug Abuse, Addiction, and Overdose
If you misuse an addictive medication long enough, you will seriously increase your risk for developing a substance use disorder (SUD). Many people with SUDs are clinically addicted to the medication in question. However, others are not addicted. Instead, they’re affected by life-impairing medication abuse. In many cases, addiction and abuse interact in complex ways. This reality helps explain why the SUD definition does not treat them as separate health concerns.
Substance use disorders are not the only potential consequence of misusing a prescription drug. Misuse also increases the odds that you will overdose on a given medication. Every year, tens of thousands of people in the U.S. die from a prescription drug overdose.
Contact the experts at DetoxLA today to learn more about your risks for prescription drug SUDs and overdoses. DetoxLA’s medical detox center in California can help you overcome your substance use disorder.
Withdrawal and the Need for Prescription Drug Detox in Los Angeles
Withdrawal is a common symptom in people affected by addiction to a prescription drug. As a rule, it’s triggered when you stop taking that drug or make rapid cutbacks in your level of use. There is a separate withdrawal syndrome for each class of prescription medication. For example, if you’re addicted to a stimulant, the effects of withdrawal may include:
- Feelings of depression or anxiety
- Unusual problems falling asleep or staying awake
- Aimless, repetitive body movements
- Fatigue
- Bouts of paranoia
If you’re addicted to an opiate or opioid medication, aspects of your withdrawal syndrome can include:
- Spikes in your normal heart rate, body temperature, or blood pressure levels
- Unusually rapid breathing
- Spasms in your muscles
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Sleeplessness
- Increased production of mucus, sweat, and tears
The intensity of unassisted medication withdrawal may be mild, moderate, or severe. Severe withdrawal can be extremely distressing and even dangerous to your health. However, even moderate or mild symptoms that go untreated can have a significant impact on you. In fact, for many people, they’re unpleasant enough to bring any attempt to get sober to a grinding halt.
An effective L.A. prescription drug detox program places a major emphasis on helping you through withdrawal. In this way, it accomplishes some crucial objectives. First, it increases the odds that you will tolerate withdrawal well enough to see it through and reach a state of initial sobriety. In addition, it provides the medical oversight needed to respond effectively to any symptoms that could cause you serious harm.
Regardless of the medications you’ve used, the detox process includes certain kinds of withdrawal support. These universally used methods include:
- Providing a detox setting that emphasizes your comfort
- Keeping you hydrated, well-fed, and otherwise generally stable
Additional methods may also be used to help you. These methods depend, in part, on the medication that needs to be eliminated from your system as well as other specific details of your personal situation.
In opioid detox, medication will be added to your withdrawal plan. This medication helps ensure that withdrawal is steady and controlled instead of rapid and uncontrolled. In benzodiazepine detox, you’re gradually weaned from your medication. This approach also results in a slow, steady, more easily tolerated, and safer withdrawal process.
Have more questions about detox’s role in helping you through prescription drug withdrawal? Get the answers you need at DetoxLA.
Other Key Goals of an L.A. Prescription Drug Detox Center
Support during withdrawal is a primary goal of professional prescription drug detox in Los Angeles. However, it is not the only goal. Before the actual detox process gets underway, you receive an evaluation that assesses such things as:
- The types of medication present in your bloodstream
- The levels of those medications
- How long and to what degree you have misused a given medication
- Your past and current level of physical and mental wellness
- The potential detox-related impact of various other aspects of your daily life
This evaluation provides the information needed to choose the right detox options for your situation. It also alerts your care team to any concerns that could alter the course of a suitable detox process.
The other key goal of detox is supporting your entry into an LA prescription drug rehab center. Rehab is the essential follow-up to detox. That’s true because it accomplishes things that detox alone cannot. That includes:
- Protecting your newfound sobriety after you complete withdrawal
- Helping you recognize habits that make you susceptible to future medication misuse
- Showing you how to abandon those habits and improve your coping skills
No matter who you are, you need the many advantages of prescription drug treatment in Los Angeles when detox ends. To find out more, talk to the professionals at DetoxLA today.
Turn to DetoxLA for Expert Prescription Drug Detox in Los Angeles
DetoxLA is a Los Angeles-area leader for all forms of prescription drug detox. Our comprehensive services include a complete assessment of your pre-detox needs. They also include state-of-the-art stabilization while you withdraw from the medication in your system. In addition, DetoxLA helps you get ready for rehab by the time you reach initial substance sobriety.
But our services don’t end with effective detoxification. DetoxLA also offers follow-up treatment for prescription drug problems. This treatment fits seamlessly into your larger addiction recovery plan. In this way, we help you get sober and remain sober. Just contact us today for more information on our full slate of detox and treatment resources.