Drug Addiction Treatment Programs: Detox, Rehab, Methadone

Inpatient Detoxification Units

Description

The Commissioner for Drugs and Health Services offers the ability to perform detoxification in hospitals, so-called inpatient detoxification units. The UDH is the third level of devices, complementing the set of specialized outpatient and residential care devices. Patients are derived here when their personal situation makes outpatient detoxification risky.

Criteria

• Not meeting the criteria for outpatient detoxification.
• Therapeutic process aimed at abstinence.
• Admission is by way of urgency.
• Initial assessment at an outpatient facility.

Referral of Patients to Therapeutic Communities

Objective

To identify, motivate, and refer patients who have a psychosocial profile and a certain background, requiring a specific boarding intervention. This avoids a return to their old environment for a period, allowing them to learn new behaviors and more adaptive standardized patterns.

Description

Depending on the psychological, social, and family factors that could make outpatient treatment difficult, the Commissioner for Therapeutic Drugs makes available therapeutic communities, primarily through other public and private entities. These communities are rehabilitative therapy devices that fall within the integrated circuit of attention to drug addiction. Resources are in a closed setting, generally far from urban centers. Admission is affected by strict order of arrival of the referral protocol to the therapeutic community, with a waiting list established for that purpose.

Methadone Treatment Program

Objectives

• Reduce the consumption of heroin and other opioids and improve the quality of life of the addict population served.
• Prevent the appearance of new cases of HIV infection in the drug addict population.
• Reduce morbidity, mortality, and social and family conflicts of the ill drug abuser, providing the potential for social integration.
• Increase retention of patients in relation to time spent in treatment.
• Attract new patients who, due to their psychosocial characteristics, have no access to standard health services.

Description

Methadone is a medication that effectively suppresses the appetite for heroin in a high percentage of addicts. This program covers a large segment of needs, both in the reduction of risk in the population addicted to heroin and in the recovery of addicts who fail in other ways.

Pharmacological Therapy Used in Drug Addiction

The user should take an active and responsible role in their treatment. When drugs are used as proposed, it is recommended that a family member or companion assumes co-responsibility for the proposed treatment.

Objectives

The objectives sought by these treatments are the prevention of relapse of drug addicts to opiate and alcohol addiction and facilitating their social integration.

Medication

• Naltrexone: Used for opiate and alcohol addiction.
• Acamprosate: Used for alcoholism.
• Alcohol deterrents (Disulfiram and Calcium Cyanamide): Incompatible with alcohol. May cause tachycardia, anxiety, sweating, nausea, headache, hypertension, and abdominal pain.

Profile

• Unable to cope with withdrawal.
• Abstinence from previous 24 hours.
• No consumption of alcoholic substances, including vinegar, soft drinks, etc.