opiate drugs Archives - Rapid Drug Detox

Understanding and Responding to Opiate Overdoses: The Importance of Speed in Emergency Situations

April 17, 2024 by Editor

Opiate overdoses are a critical public health issue that can lead to severe health crises and even death. When someone overdoses on opiates—such as opium, OxyContin, heroin, morphine, Suboxone, Methadone, or codeine—quick response is crucial. The speed of intervention often matters more than the specific substance involved because the longer the delay, the more the body absorbs the drug, increasing the risk of serious damage or fatality.

Recognizing the Symptoms of Opiate Overdose

Symptoms of an opiate overdose vary widely but may include:

Unconsciousness or coma
Seizures
Confusion or disorientation
Drowsiness, fainting, or dizziness
Uncoordinated movements
Slow pulse
Vomiting
Muscular relaxation
Atypical behavior such as appearing drunk or psychotic
Breathing difficulties, including shallow breathing or respiratory arrest
Slurred speech
Unusually high or low body temperature
Pupils that are enlarged or constricted
Reddish face with heavy sweating
Delusions or hallucinations
Cool, clammy, pale skin

Immediate Steps to Take in an Opiate Overdose

Call 911 Immediately: Immediate medical intervention is critical.
Check and Support Vital Signs: If the victim is unconscious and not breathing, begin CPR immediately. Check airways to remove any obstructions like pills or vomit.
Position Safely: If the person is unconscious but stable, place them in the recovery position—lying on their side to ensure an open airway and to prevent choking.
Preserve Evidence: Collect any pills, syringes, or drug paraphernalia near the person to give to the emergency responders. If possible, save a sample of vomit for analysis.
Monitor and Communicate: If the individual is conscious, ask about what they took, how much, and when. Keep them awake and alert if possible. This information can be crucial for medical staff upon their arrival.

What Not to Do

Do Not Induce Vomiting: Only do this if explicitly instructed by a healthcare professional.
Do Not Give Food or Drink: Unless directed by a medical professional.
Never Leave Them Alone: Continuous monitoring is essential until help arrives.

In every case of suspected opiate overdose, the key is to act swiftly and effectively. While you wait for medical help, your actions can make a significant difference in the outcome. Awareness and preparedness can save lives, emphasizing the need for public education on recognizing and responding to drug overdoses effectively.

Subutex, Suboxone, Buprenex Detoxification

July 4, 2015 by Editor

Subutex Suboxone Buprenex Detoxification

Perhaps your physician or a detox clinic prescribed Subutex (Buprenorphine) for “opiate addiction maintenance” to cure you of your heroin addiction. In other words, they hooked you on a new opiate to “free” you from your original one. Does that make sense? The Federal Controlled Substance Act calls Subutex, Suboxone, Buprenex, a Schedule III controlled opiate drug and for good reason. You probably did not realize that you now had a new, more difficult addiction, until after you had been released from your “maintenance” program. Maybe, like many other Subutex, Suboxone, Buprenex patients, you find yourself as bad or even worse than before switching from your original opiate; heroin.

The National Institute of Health recently reported that over 6 million Americans have used prescription drugs non-medically in the last month. Trading addictions does not solve your drug problem.

This is why it is so important to question any treatment center you are considering, to learn the truth about their programs. Trading one opiate drug for another does not work. It can also lead to a condition called Hyperalgesia. Long term use of opiate drugs can decrease your body’s ability to produce the amount of testosterone and estrogen you need.

Approximately 15% of the patients at the Rapid Drug Detox (RDD) Center arrive “Suboxone® addicted”. The good news, is that they leave clean and free of any opiates in their system. Clean and free of their addiction. Clean and free of their cravings, after a more painless 3-day treatment.

The RDD Method™ works by “cleansing” the addicting drug from your brain’s opiate receptors. It even eases you successfully through the “rebound anxiety” that often accompanies detoxification.

The actual procedure takes about an hour. After a brief, painless series of tests, you are admitted to the operating room (O.R.). There, an experienced, board certified anesthesiologist gives you a medication to relax and then administers a light, general anesthesia, while you rest comfortably. Then, while you rest, a team of experienced doctors “scrubs” the opiate receptors in your body, using an infusion of intravenous medications.

With the opiate drugs removed from your receptors, the worst of the withdrawal is over. And you slept through it all.

The RDD Center’s Naltrexone Therapy keeps you clean and eliminates drug cravings. Unlike Suboxone, Naltrexone is not a narcotic and is not addicting. You can read more about Naltrexone by clicking here.

What You Should Know About Opiate Drug Overdoses

September 9, 2010 by Editor

When someone overdoses on opiate drugs, speed is the most important factor, even more so than the substance that was overdosed on. This is because the longer a drug overdose victim goes without treatment, the more the drug is absorbed, and the more damage is done. People can

easily die from drug overdoses.

Symptoms

When someone has overdosed on the following Opiates: Opium; oxycontin, heroin; morphine; Suboxone, Methadone™; codeine, etc.

Unconscious
Coma
Seizing
Confused
Drowsiness
Fainting, dizzy, uncoordinated
Slow pulse
Vomiting
Muscular relaxation
Acting strangely, drunk, psychotic
Have difficulty breathing
Shallow breathing
Respiratory arrest
Slurred speech
High or low temperature
Enlarged or extra small pupils
Reddish face and heavy sweating
Delusions or hallucinations
Cool clammy pale skin

Treatment

Call 911 immediately
If the drug overdose victim is unconscious check vital signs. If you need to, begin CPR (no pulse).
If the person is unconscious check the airways and clear them out (remove any pills, vomit, etc)
Once the unconscious person is ‘stable’ place them in the recovery position (lying on their side) and wait for help to arrive while keeping a close eye on them.
If you find pills, syringes, medications, bottles & containers (from medications or drugs) or drugs around the person save them and give them to the medics when they arrive. If available, save a sample of the vomit as well.
If the person is conscious ask them what happened and most importantly keep them as awake and alert as possible.
DO NOT try to induce vomiting unless instructed to do so by a medical professional. The poison control center will tell you what to give and how much to give based on the persons age/weight and other stats.
DO NOT give the person anything to eat or drink unless instructed
DO NOT leave the person alone
Try to figure out the time when the drug was taken and what quantity was taken.

The Chemical Imbalance Scam

March 2, 2010 by Editor

by David B. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and Criminal Justice
Virginia State University
www.drdavestein.com

One of the subjects that I have taught for over twenty-five years is psychopharmacology. It might be helpful to challenge one of the great myths about mental disorders, namely that they are caused by chemical imbalances. This myth is founded on some of the tricks that are pulled in so-called scientific research in psychology and psychiatry. First, there is a large volume of research claiming to discover all kinds of chemical imbalances in a wide variety of psychiatric disorders. The manipulation of research has become one of the most powerful and most unethical marketing tools ever devised. Not one study can be replicated at the testing labs of hospitals or by laboratories involved in clinical patient care. All that one needs to do is ask his or her doctor to order a blood or urine test to confirm any psychiatric disorder, and the response will be, “I’m sorry, but no such test exists.” Replication is a basic step for all sciences.

The second manipulation is a bit trickier to follow. An unethical researcher, earning grant money from the pharmaceutical companies, injects test subjects with a radioactive sample of a nervous system hormone, such as dopamine, serotonin, nor-epinephrine, and so on, and then trace, using either CT scans, MRIs, or PET scans, exactly to what parts of the brain the chemicals go. They can even trace the hormones to microscopic receptor sites on the ends on neurons. They then repeat the injection process with a radioactive sample of one of the drugs that supposedly correct chemical imbalances, such as antidepressants that elevate serotonin, or amphetamines that effect serotonin and dopamine, and so on and so forth. By golly the drugs go to the same exact parts of the brain and receptor sites as the hormones. Conclusion, the drugs are correcting chemical imbalances!

Not so fast. The part they do not tell the public, and even professional psychiatrists, psychologists, and practicing physicians, is that we can precisely measure hormone levels in all people, and diagnosis does not matter. We can measure the metabolites in the blood, which are the residue left after the hormones are metabolized i.e. used by the nerve and body cells. This tells us the precise amount of hormones carried in anyone’s body. When that is done, as it has by numerous honest researchers, we discover that the amount of hormones are exactly the same for anyone with a diagnosis, such as depression, attention deficit disorders (ADD/ADHD), bipolar, and schizophrenia, as with anyone diagnosed as perfectly normal.

There is a third part to the perpetuation of scam information. We are told that when a drug alleviates certain psychiatric conditions, such as depression and anxiety, that the drug is therefore correcting obvious chemical imbalances. However, this type of logic is not permitted in true science. This is called “allopathic logic”, which is a no no.

Dr. David B. Stein is Professor of Psychology and Criminal Justice at Virginia State University. He is a best-selling author, and his books include: Ritalin is Not the Answer: A Drug-free, Practical Program for Children Diagnosed with ADD or ADHD; The Ritalin is Not the Answer Action Guide: An Interactive Companion to the best-selling Drug-Free ADD/ADHD Parenting Program; Unraveling the ADD/ADHD Fiasco: A Guide for Successful Parenting; and Controlling the Difficult Adolescent: The REST Program (Real Economy Program for Teens).

REM Sleep and Napping Shown to Improve Receptiveness to Positive Emotion

June 11, 2009 by Editor

At the SLEEP 2009 conference in Seattle this week, researchers from the University of California – Berkeley revealed results of a study that showed naps with rapid eye movement sleep refresh the brain’s perception of positive emotions. Study participants who took a 60 to 90 minute nap mid-day with REM sleep were much more receptive to happy facial expressions. Those who didn’t nap had an increased reaction to negative emotions.

Most opiate users never nap and during the night they do not experience good REM sleep. This may be another factor contributing to the sadness and depression that opiate dependent people experience.

Buprenorphine Drug Treatments: Trading One Bad Habit for Another

August 28, 2008 by Editor

A new trend is emerging that is leaving drug addicts that set out seeking treatment in worse conditions then they were before they started treatment: doctors prescribing opiates as a solution for drug addiction treatment.

What is Buprenorphine Treatment

Methadone and OxyContin have been trendy methods of Drug Addiction Treatment for the past few years. These “treatment” methods call for heroin addicts to be placed on a prescription drug of Methadone or OxyContin in order to lessen withdrawal and craving effects associated with abruptly stopping drug usage. What happens, however, is that dosages of Methadone need to be steadily increased in order to get the full effect of the drug, ultimately reaching the point where drug addicts become addicted to the treatment drug. The addiction to the treatment opiates then leads to illegal means of acquiring those prescription drugs.

Buprenorphine Treatment is a similar “treatment method” to Methadone and OxyContin. With Buprenorphine, drug addicts are prescribed orange pills which dissolve under the tongue in order to relieve addicts’ cravings for narcotics. The thing to remember, though, is that Buprenorphine is an opiate.

Buprenorphine Treatment Abuse

In recent months, Burprenorphine has become one of the most popular and requested street drugs, mostly by drug addicts who were prescribed the opiate as a treatment option and now need a higher dosage than their doctor will prescribe.

Health officials have seen patients crushing and injecting Buprenorphine pills, eventually leading to overdose and relapse situations. A recent report by The Sun investigated abuse of the drug, which included illegal street sales.

Explore Your Treatment Options

If you or someone you care about has made the decision to seek drug addiction treatment, please research all of your options before deciding on which treatment is best for you. Realizing that your body can easily become addicted to drugs – even opiate drugs that are being prescribed by doctors – early in the research process will help ensure a successful treatment journey. Don’t trade one bad habit for another!

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