New Ways to Help People Beat Opioid Addiction > News > Yale Medicine

Family therapy can help families with a member or members who are dealing with addiction, but it is especially effective for adolescents with substance use disorders. Some opioids have such a strong affinity for opioid receptors that they can overcome naltrexone and displace it, allowing them to exert their effects anyways, Wade explains. Harm reduction saves the lives of people who may otherwise die of blood-borne infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis, and overdose. It also helps connect people with professionals, resources, and information to help them once they seek treatment and stop using opioids. Harm reduction focuses on reducing the physical and social harms that affect people who use heroin (and sometimes other opioids) rather than on encouraging the person to quit.

Does relapse to drug use mean treatment has failed?

A recovery plan that includes medication for opioid use disorder increases the chance of success. Medications for opioid use disorders are safe, effective, and save lives. These medicines interact with the same opioid receptors in the brain on which other prescription opioids act.

Overdose Prevention

Wade says that these moves should help increase the accessibility of this treatment. If you choose medical treatment for addiction, you’ll have several options. They may be combined with other forms of treatment, or you may need to try more than one to find one that works for you. Play an active role in protecting yourself and others from the dangers of opioid addiction.

What are the principles of effective treatment?

Too many people in the U.S. find themselves in this state of desperation because of opioid use disorder (OUD) — the medical condition that results when someone has an addiction to opioids. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three medications—methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone—for the treatment of OUD. When this takes place under opioid addiction treatment medical supervision, it is termed “medically managed withdrawal.” Overdose prevention is a CDC priority that impacts families and communities. While no single treatment method is right for everyone, recovery is possible, and help is available for OUD. Opioid use during pregnancy can lead to neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in some newborns.

Outpatient counseling can help people understand addiction, their triggers, and their reasons for using drugs. This form of treatment can be done at a doctor’s office or via telehealth appointment. Drug addiction is a chronic disease characterized by compulsive, or uncontrollable, drug seeking and use despite harmful consequences and long-lasting changes in the brain. The changes can result in harmful behaviors by those who misuse drugs, whether prescription or illicit drugs. Opioid misuse can cause slowed breathing, which can cause hypoxia, a condition that results when too little oxygen reaches the brain. Hypoxia can have short- and long-term psychological and neurological effects, including coma, permanent brain damage, or death.

This can decrease the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain, which can result in coma, permanent brain damage, or death. You are living with your peers, and you can support each other to stay in recovery. Inpatient hospital-based programs combine health care and OUD treatment services for people with medical problems. All these types of treatments are very structured, and usually include several different kinds of counseling and behavioral therapies.

• When sharing your concerns about addiction, try not to be confrontational or accusatory.
• But Connecticut families have testified to lawmakers about the ineffectiveness of 30-day rapid detoxification programs and “sober houses,” or group homes where people recovering from addiction have to stay completely off of drugs and alcohol.
• Friends and family members who are desperately trying to get their loved one help have a front-row seat to the devastation.
• Given that Democrats across the income spectrum supported the redistributive funding bill, our research suggests the potential for a coalition between Democrats and lower-income Republicans.