Hydrocodone Addiction Treatment

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Hydrocodone, a codeine-based derivative, is the most frequently prescribed opioid in the United States.  Much like a variety of other opiate drugs, hydrocodone addiction has become a growing epidemic in the United States.

Hydrocodone addiction treatment provides the type of medical care and counseling needed to overcome an addiction habit. As with most opiate addictions, the potential for relapse remains an ongoing challenge for people wanting to break their addiction as well as for people in recovery.

Hydrocodone

While hydrocodone is intended to treat conditions involving moderate to severe pain, when used for recreational purposes, the drug creates a pleasant sense of well-being and an easy-going nature in most users. For these reasons, people become tempted to take the drug as a way better to handle everyday stressors and daily interactions with others. Unfortunately, the pleasant effects produced by hydrocodone ultimately wreak havoc on a person’s central nervous system.

For acute pain management, the National Institutes of Health reports that opioid use is safest when used for three or fewer days. Beyond that, a person is at high risk of developing opioid dependence.  Once the body and brain become dependent on hydrocodone’s effects, it’s all but impossible to stop using it through sheer willpower. Hydrocodone addiction treatment makes it possible for a person to live their daily life without the need for the drug.

Withdrawal Treatment

Hydrocodone addiction treatment helps patients overcome addiction.

Even in cases where a person stops using hydrocodone on his or her own, the drug’s withdrawal symptoms make life all but unbearable. In effect, the body’s pain/pleasure receptors have suffered considerable damage from ongoing hydrocodone abuse. Feelings of fatigue, fever, chills, depression, nausea, jitteriness and cloudy thinking processes eventually drive a person to start using again, according to a University of Hawaii report.

Hydrocodone addiction treatment uses medication therapies to help ease withdrawal symptoms and reduce the likelihood of relapse. These medications enable a person to make it through detoxification without the discomforts that occur from going “cold turkey.”

Psychotherapy Treatment

Eliminating all traces of hydrocodone, while necessary, does little good in breaking an addiction unless the person deals with the psychological motivations that underlie their addiction. Hydrocodone addiction treatment uses intensive, ongoing psychotherapy to help a person address the thoughts and behaviors that drive their addiction.

Opiate drugs like hydrocodone tend to make users believe they can’t function, or at least feel normal, without the drug. Hydrocodone addiction treatment helps a person recover from this destructive mindset by learning healthy ways of functioning in everyday life.

How is Hydrocodone Addiction Treated?

After a thorough medical evaluation, someone with a hydrocodone addiction will likely be treated with a combination of medication and behavioral therapy.

Medication Therapies

As part of the hydrocodone addiction treatment process, many people require ongoing medication therapy to ease withdrawal symptoms from the drug. Withdrawal symptoms persist as the brain and body attempt to repair damaged central nervous system functions. While a person is using hydrocodone, it takes over these functions. Over time, the body craves more and more of the drug to maintain normal functioning. When a person stops using, the body has to “re-learn” how to manage these central nervous system functions.

Hydrocodone addiction treatment uses medications, such as buprenorphine and naltrexone, to help make this process easier and more tolerable.  Over time,  the dosages are tapered down to the point where a person’s body can function normally on its own.

Addiction Treatment for Pain Conditions

Even when hydrocodone is prescribed to treat pain conditions, a person can still become addicted to the drug’s effects.

Hydrocodone creates a self-reinforcing effect that can cause a person to take the drug when no pain symptoms are present. This results from hydrocodone’s effects on the brain’s reward system or pain-and-pleasure center. This, coupled with the need to take larger dosage amounts to achieve the same pain-relieving effects, leaves pain sufferers at the mercy of the drug.

When continued treatment for pain is needed, hydrocodone addiction treatment should include a pain management plan that addresses any existing pain symptoms while also treating the addiction.

Social Supports

While medication and psychotherapy treatments remain essential components of hydrocodone addiction treatment, having a social support system in place can make it easier to face tough times throughout recovery. Most treatment programs offer recovering addicts referrals to community-based groups as part of hydrocodone addiction treatment. Narcotics Anonymous groups are an example of a community-based group that offers a lifetime’s worth of support to recovering addicts.

Hydrocodone addiction treatment programs may also make it a point to include friends and family members in the treatment process through group therapy sessions. These measures combined enable recovering addicts to create a positive support network that keeps them focused on their recovery.

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