The key is to seek medication.
The most common opiate is heroin. Others include dilaudid, morphine, and codeine. There’s also the infamous Oxycontin. Oxycontin is a heavy-duty pain killer that works for 24-hours. It’s available only by prescription, is a narcotic, and is often sold or given to someone who does not have the prescription. In any case, whatever type of opiate you’ve decided to abuse, the withdrawals, as you’ve heard, are pretty nasty.
Having withdrawals from these harsh drugs involves:
- excessive sweating
- agitation and anxiety
- insomnia
- muscle aches
Sadly, these are just the early symptoms. Later ones include
- vomiting
- severe nausea
- diarrhea
- abdominal cramps
The withdrawals start about twelve hours after your last use of opiates. They tend to continue for a few weeks, though you can forestall them with methadone.
This is somehow similar to how you feel the next day after abusing alcohol. You need to understand what’s happening in your body.
Other Medications
While methadone is a common medication for withdrawal, there are others. You have Buprenorphine, plus Clonidine for some of the minor, nagging symptoms typical of the early stages.
The National Institutes for Health recommend that antidepressant medications also be used as needed, as a common remedy.
Photo credit SimonQ on Flickr
