Addiction treatment – Jacksonville, Florida

What are opioids:
Opioids are a class of drugs naturally found in the plant opium. Opioids cause a variety of effects on the brain. The use of these drugs causes pain relief. Opioids could be prescription medication used for pain relief, or they can be street drugs such as heroin.

Heroin is highly addictive. Heroin addiction has detrimental effects on individual health and society. It cost our nation billions of dollars each year.

Like many other chronic diseases, opioid addiction can be treated. Treatment options are available to reduce heroin use disorder while reducing drug cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

What is opioid addiction?
Opioid addiction is a disease that involves compulsive drug-seeking, even when there may be negative consequences. It’s not a moral weakness. It’s a chronic disease in which people develop a pattern of using opioids that can lead to clinically significant impairment or distress. Some of the most commonly abused opioids include hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, and heroin.

Effect of opioids addiction on the brain
Opioids when taken, it goes to the brain through the blood and produces a variety of effects on the brain. Long-term use of opioids changes our brain chemistry. Sustained use changes the brain at cellular levels. Once altered, our brain responds differently to stress and pain.

Chronic use of opioids also changes our brain at chemical levels. It alters the way our brain responds chemically to triggers.

Regions of the brain that control reward, decision-making, impulse control, learning, and other functions may be affected in people with opioid addiction. Because of the effects of opioids on the brain over time for some people with opioid addiction, choosing whether to take opioids may be out of a person’s control. As a matter of fact, it is not about the willingness or weak self-control.

As much as patients need therapy, counseling, and support to help them beat their addictions, they also sometimes need medications to make that journey easier (or even possible).

Our treatment plan for addiction
At MedexClinic we prescribe Suboxone®

What is inside suboxone®:
Suboxone is actually the combination of two different drugs: buprenorphine (a partial opioid agonist) and naloxone (a pure opioid antagonist).

As a partial opioid agonist, buprenorphine’s job is to deliver very diminished opioid doses to a patient who is addicted to a stronger opioid. It provides a way for the client to be gradually weaned off their pre-existing addiction, while minimizing the opioid withdrawal symptoms that would come from the process. An agonist, explains the National Advocates of Buprenorphine Treatment, activates receptors in the brain. Heroin is a full opioid agonist, so when a patient uses heroin, those receptors are completely triggered, resulting in a wide range of effects and the severe addictiveness of heroin. The journal Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy describes how buprenorphine, as a partial agonist, has “low intrinsic activity.” Since it triggers the opioid receptors in the brain only partially, the “highs” are quite low in comparison to those created by full agonists. Such effects make buprenorphine a good first step in the treatment of heroin and opioid abuse.

The other drug in Suboxone is naloxone, a pure opioid antagonist.

An agonist excites an opioid receptor; an antagonist shuts it down, blocking agonists from reaching the receptor and even reversing the effect of opioid agonists already in the patient’s system by intercepting the signals that the receptors send to the nervous system.

However, naloxone’s action of shutting off opioid receptors and signals in the body can trigger withdrawal symptoms for people who are currently on an opioid, causing effects that range from agitation and irritability to wild mood swings, insomnia, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramping, and diarrhea. Patients who have been chronically addicted to full opioid agonists (like heroin) are at risk for developing seizures and respiratory failure, which can prove fatal.

Since naloxone carries too many risks for it to be administered by itself, it is combined with buprenorphine to give clients an easier process of weaning away from stronger narcotics. The result of the combination is Suboxone. In its first clinical trial of extended usage to treat opioid addiction in young adults, a study of 154 people put together by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Suboxone treatment “substantially improved” their outcomes. The study’s principal investigator noted a “marked reduction” in the use of not just opioids, but also other drugs, as well as better retention of treatment concepts in the patients who were randomly assigned to the group that received long-term Suboxone (as opposed to the group that received treatment without Suboxone).

That study was conducted in 2008; in 2013, the Administration reported 9.3 million prescriptions for buprenorphine (under the trade name of Suboxone) were filled in the previous year.

Safety information you should know while taking subaxone
Keep SUBOXONE Sublingual Film in a secure place out of sight and reach of children, and in a location not accessible by others, including visitors to the home. Accidental use by a child is a medical emergency and can result in death. If a child accidentally takes SUBOXONE Sublingual Film, get emergency help or call 911 right away. Tell your healthcare provider if you are living in a household where there are small children.

SUBOXONE Sublingual Film contains an opioid medicine called buprenorphine that can cause serious and life-threatening breathing problems, especially if you take or use certain other medicines or drugs.

Who should avoid using suboxone
SUBOXONE Film is not recommended in patients with severe hepatic impairment and may not be appropriate for patients with moderate hepatic impairment. However, SUBOXONE Film may be used with caution for maintenance treatment in patients with moderate hepatic impairment who have initiated treatment on a buprenorphine product without naloxone.

Do not take SUBOXONE Film before the effects of other opioids (e.g, heroin, hydrocodone, methadone, morphine, oxycodone) have subsided as you may experience withdrawal symptoms.

Our goal
At MedexClinic, we work towards making our community a healthier community. our goal is to aid you in your journey of physical and emotional recovery. In addition to our other services. MedexClinic offers a way forward for those struggling with opioids addiction. It is extremely important to us that you receive the highest quality medical care from our highly qualified staff.