Monday 3 July 2017

Addiction Treatment : Natural vs. Medical Detox

There are very few things that can be grievous than seeing a loved one being addicted to drugs or yourself being hooked to some form of drugs. But it can be even more painful when trying detoxification from drugs on your body.

According to a report published by the New York Times, in 2016 deaths due to drug overdose had exceeded to 59,000. This is the largest annual record the United States ever had. Also, it is found that more people died in the United States by drug overdose than those died in car accidents. Hence the issue of drug detox requires our urgent attention.

What is actually detox? Detox means cleansing your body from all those harmful substances which you’ve allowed to manipulate your body and mind. It needs great efforts as well as strong willpower to get rid of these felons from your body. But it is possible and yes you can succeed in your fight against abusing drugs.

As we will consider there are two ways to detox your body from drugs. One is a Natural way and the second is getting it done through medication.

Natural Detox: How is it Done


Natural detox involves fighting the problem on our own and without the help of any medical supervision. This is done by incorporating all our energy and resources at hand to get it done. To naturally detox your body from drugs it is important that you plan the procedures.

Abusing drugs cause dehydration in your body. So the first thing in Natural Detox is to rehydrate your body with plenty of water. It is advisable to keep the intake of water to at least 80 oz. Water will spill out those toxins out of your body through sweat.

Switching to organic foods like Green leafy vegetables, yoghurt, cilantro, lemon, wheatgrass as well as drinking green tea instead of a coffee can boost the level of antioxidants in your body and will rejuvenate your immune power. Some have preferred intensive body massage helpful in detox. 

Even though the Natural Detox is helpful to some extent, but the addicted person cannot fully apply these procedures. Some even try the cold-turkey detox, that is totally refraining themselves from any kind of drugs. But this method can be harmful when practised on some drugs. The withdrawal symptoms with Natural Detox can be so painful that the person cannot handle himself and hence when facing relapse again gets to his former way of abusing drugs.

Medical Detox: A systematic way to detox your body



Unlike Natural Detox, Medical Detox is done under the supervision of a medical assistant. In- house detox can be done by going to a rehab centre. Rehab centres employ various methods to detox your body from drugs.

Evaluating the addiction:

In this stage, the person is evaluated in terms of his drug abusing level. Certain factors like since how long the person have been abusing drugs, what effects those drugs have inflicted on his body, how intense is his willpower to break free of those drugs. All these and other evaluations are done at this stage.

Stabilising your body:

In this process, the evaluated person is prescribed with medications. Medications can be prescribed on a short-term or on a long- term depending on the level of toxicants in the body. This is done under the supervision of a rehab assistant and doctors monitor the progress of a person. Medications are replaced according to the response the body shows towards those medicines.

For opiates like heroin, morphine medications such as buprenorphine, methadone and clonidine are prescribed. For alcohol detoxification medications like diazepam, lorazepam, Phenobarbitals have shown considerable results.

During this stage, the person is also counseled about the benefits of drug detoxification and is motivated to keep this way of life.

Even though medical detox is more effective in dealing with drugs, a long-term use of painkillers and other medications used in detox can cause addiction. This pain pill detoxification is on the rise as some consistently use pain killers and that leads to addiction.
Hence, when choosing the detox methods it will be wise to take the help of a medical consultant until the time you find the balance and get a measure of control over your body and mind.