For a person with severe anxiety or pain, opioids provide unmatched relief. Many people suffering from panic disorder report that taking opioids allows them to feel normal, sometimes for the first time in their lives. Anyone can become chemically dependent on opioids, but people don’t believe it until it happens to them. Greater Boston Addiction Centers offers an employee assistance program to help people maintain their careers while overcoming opioid addiction.
Overcoming addiction is a job–the most challenging and rewarding job you will ever have, so we have structured our addiction treatment programs to either resemble or accommodate a typical workday. Unlike other Boston opioid rehabs, we offer a daytime intensive outpatient treatment framework and an evening intensive outpatient treatment framework.
Opioids are dangerous because, in addition to eliminating acute pain and anxiety, opioids prevent the brain from coping with the mild stress and pain associated with everyday living. Taking opioids causes structural and functional changes in reward, survival, and affect-processing centers of the brain. Signs of opioid dependency include the following:
Opioids are often prescribed during periods of intense emotional and physical suffering. While they certainly provide relief, they often prevent people from developing the coping skills they need in order to cope with life. Chemically dependent people don’t want to use; they need to use. For this reason, a Boston partial hospitalization program (PHP) can be an important step in helping people overcome opioid addiction. In addition to relieving pain and stress, opioids severely interrupt normal functioning and cause an array of health and relationship problems.
Attending treatment for opioid addiction takes time and commitment, but the alternative is worse. Trying to taper opioid use is almost impossible on your own because opioids cause chemical changes in the survival centers of the brain; some long-term opioid use–even when advised by a doctor–erodes our ability to cope with pain and stress. Opioids are central nervous system depressants. Similar to alcohol addiction, opioid addiction causes severe social and occupational dysfunction. If your brain tells you that you cannot survive without the relief provided by opioids, your natural course of action will be to use them. There are hundreds of different opioids, but these are a few of the most addictive:
