Nearly five years ago, the National Drug Intelligence Center’s annual report stated heroin was moving into suburban areas, and it indicated the drug’s popularity was stabilized and even declining. However, the NDIC’s National Drug Threat Assessment, based partly on local law enforcement officials, reported some startling results in 2008. It appeared that drug dealers were finding it lucrative to target young adults in suburban and rural areas because they could easily monopolize the area’s heroin market. Usage was on the rise.
Heroin drug abuse has some short term effects that with minor repeated abuse grow quickly into long-term effects. The most detrimental long-term side effect of heroin drug abuse is the addiction itself. Neurochemical and molecular changes in the brain create an obsessively drug seeking and usage addict with chronic and frequent relapses. Strong, overwhelming degrees of tolerance and physical dependence are produced by heroin, creating, like any other abuser addicted to drugs, a compulsive desire to obtain and use the drug.
As heroin drug abuse viciously turns to addiction, the abuser’s sole purpose is to seek and use the drug. The drug has already changed their thought process and behavior. Their physical dependence develops with higher doses, and if use is abruptly ended painful withdrawal symptoms will occur due to the body’s adaption to the presence of the drug.
Symptoms such as restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes with goose bumps, and jerky leg movements occur almost immediately. Between 24-48 hours major withdrawal symptoms occur and they begin to subside after a week, but in some cases of heroin drug abuse these last for many months.
It is now widely known that since craving and relapse can occur weeks and even months after withdrawal symptoms have disappeared, that physical dependence and the appearance of symptoms are not the only key features of heroin drug abuse addiction. Therefore, treatment for both physical and emotional recovery is a long process.
Finding the right drug treatment center, like the Pat Moore Treatment Center, is pivotal to any abusers long-term success.