How To Flush Alcohol Out of Your System

man thinking about alcohol detox

How To Flush Alcohol Out of Your System

man thinking about alcohol detoxIf you’ve overindulged at a party, you might be wondering how to flush alcohol out of your system to get rid of a hangover. In that case, the answer is pretty simple. Drink plenty of water, possibly some soda or carbonated water, eat a few healthy meals, go for a walk, and wait it out. But, most people looking up how to flush alcohol out of their system are looking to detox, either because they want to sober up, because they are facing a drug and alcohol test, or because they’re taking medication.

If that’s the case, the answer is unfortunately a lot more difficult. It’s almost impossible to speed up how quickly alcohol leaves your system. However, you might be able to influence how quickly you sober up – although even that won’t always be the case.

Can You Sober Up Quickly?

Unfortunately, once you’re drunk you’re just going to have to wait it out. Having caffeine and some water can help you to feel steady sooner. That’s also true of having a solid meal. However, it won’t reduce the impact of alcohol on your senses any sooner. Instead, you might feel safe driving or work, even when you really shouldn’t be. For most people, you’ll have to wait at least an hour after every unit of alcohol before you’ll sober up. If you’ve had a bunch of shots, that could be the same number of hours as the number of shots you had.

Most importantly, a lot of people resort to chugging water or caffeine. Not only does this not help, it can actually hurt you. Similarly, forcing yourself to throw up won’t reduce the alcohol in your system – although it may prevent you from getting more drunk if you’ve had alcohol within the last 15-45 minutes.

How to Recover From Drinking More Quickly

If you’ve had a long night drinking and are facing a hangover, there’s unfortunately not too much you can do. Here, most of the steps you can take to prevent a hangover are important before or during drinking. For example, eat a good meal before you start drinking, get enough sleep, and drink plenty of water or soda while drinking. You’ll also want to try to drink in moderation – but if that were the case, you wouldn’t be looking for tips.

  • Get some exercise, it will help you speed up your metabolism (briefly).
  • Drink plenty of water. Alcohol dehydrates and many of the negative effects the day after are “just” dehydration. Of course, it will do more if you try drinking a glass of water per alcoholic beverage you drink at night.
  • Get plenty of sleep. Your body needs time to rest and process alcohol.
  • Drinking soda while drinking can create pressure in your stomach, moving alcohol through your system more quickly. However, you might also feel the effects of alcohol more quickly.

Those tips may help you with a hangover. However, they won’t really help you to detox.

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Can You Flush Alcohol Out of Your System for a Test?

man consulting a doctor regarding alcohol detoxIf you’re facing a drug and alcohol test or a breathalyzer test, there’s not much you can do. Unfortunately, breathalyzers can detect alcohol for 12-24 hours after your last drink. If you have a blood test, it can detect alcohol for up to 12 hours. And, if you have a urine test, that could be up to 80 hours. That can be bad if you’re taking a test and you’ve been drinking when you shouldn’t have been. However, there’s not much you can do.

In fact, all of the home remedies such as drinking a great deal of water, taking herbal supplements, or taking detoxes don’t actually work. You can’t speed up how quickly your body processes alcohol. Instead, that’s determined by factors like your metabolism, body fat, liver health, volume of alcohol consumed, normal alcohol consumption, etc.

Otherwise, there’s no way to fake a test. Instead, you’re recommended to be upfront about it, to admit to drinking alcohol, and to talk about it with your employer. If you just had a late night, everything should be fine. And, even if you’ve broken company rules, you’ll likely still have an easier time if you talk about it right away instead of waiting for a test to come back.

How Do You Detox from Alcohol?

Alcohol detox is the process of going through withdrawal, usually in a controlled medical environment. Depending on how much you drink, how often you drink, and whether or not you experience withdrawal symptoms when you quit drinking, this process may be extremely difficult and dangerous or relatively simple.

In most cases, alcohol withdrawal sets in within 12-24 hours of your last drink. Symptoms start out slowly and increase over the course of a few days. From there, you’ll normally experience cravings, cold and flu symptoms, shaking, paranoia, anxiety, and potentially mild seizures. 2% of heavy drinkers develop into longer-term symptoms with potentially severe side effects. For this reason, if you drink heavily, it’s important to seek out medical detox and support when trying to quit alcohol. Withdrawal should normally take about 2 weeks from start to finish. However, it will only get you through physical addiction to alcohol. If you have cravings, seeking behavior, or behavioral addiction to alcohol, you’ll need addiction treatment to fully quit alcohol.

If you’re drinking so much that you’re concerned about being caught, are struggling with hangovers, or find yourself drinking in situations where you shouldn’t or where it causes danger to others, you probably need help. That often means seeking our addiction treatment including therapy and counseling to help you understand the underlying causes behind your reliance on alcohol, to help you find better coping mechanisms, to help you build life skills to manage stress, and to build a life you can enjoy.

Going to rehab can sound like a big step and it is. At the same time, alcohol addiction treatment can help you to get your life back, and it’s just the first step on a journey to recovery.

If you or your loved-one struggles from alcoholism or other substance abuse please contact us today and speak with one of our experienced and professional intake advisors about our detox, partial hospitalization, and residential treatment programs. We’re here to help you recover.

What Are the Most Addictive Prescription Medications?

What Are the Most Addictive Prescription Medications

What Are the Most Addictive Prescription Medications?

What Are the Most Addictive Prescription MedicationsMore than 1/3rd of Americans, or 66% of all adults, or 131 million people, take at least one prescription medication. Americans spend some $73 billion on prescription drugs annually, and that’s often with the expectation that those drugs will improve our health, reduce symptoms, and improve our quality of life. Unfortunately for many, prescription drugs don’t work the same for everyone and many can be habit forming and addictive. In fact, while awareness of the addictive potential of pain pills and opioids is on the rise, prescription opioid usage is still one of the leading causes of moving on to street drugs like heroin.

If you or a loved one is being prescribed a medication, you don’t have to worry. Talk to your doctor, request a Risk Evaluation and Management Strategy (REMS), and go in for your checkups. As long as you use the prescription medication as directed, you shouldn’t have problems with the drug. However, it’s important to have those discussions, to understand your risks, and to understand how prescription drugs can impact your health and your mental health.

Many drugs can be habit forming or dependence inducing, meaning they are “addictive”. However, the following are the most addictive prescription medications.

Opioids

Opioids are the most well-known class of prescription painkillers. These drugs all work in similar ways, by binding to the opiate receptors in the brain. In small doses, they can reduce your perception of pain and create a calming or sedative effect. In high doses, they can create euphoria and intense highs that can be extremely addictive.

OpioidsFor many people, opioids are the most addictive drug. In fact, fentanyl, an extremely strong opioid, is one of the most addictive in the world, and also takes part in some 70% of all opioid overdoses.

Common opioids include:

  • Oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet)
  • Codeine
  • Fentanyl
  • Meperidine (Demerol)

Each of these drugs has different properties and strengths. However, all of them work in the same way. All of them also cause euphoria when taking large doses. And, people abusing these drugs normally start to show long-term cold and flu symptoms, stomach problems, lethargy or drops in energy, and increased “seeking behavior”. Here, individuals think about, use, or spend time acquiring drugs for a significant portion of their day, their behavior changes, and they may prioritize drugs over anything else.

Once someone is physically dependent on an opioid medication, getting off of it will require a withdrawal phase. That can mean up to 2 weeks of severe cold and flu symptoms, anxiety, and depression, which can interfere with normal life and responsibilities. For this reason, many people using pain pills end up continuing to use them to avoid withdrawal symptoms, despite no longer needing them for pain management.

However, if you receive an opioid medication, you’ll likely only have it for a few weeks. Doctors are increasingly aware of the dangers of opioid addiction and will therefore normally take large steps to ensure you are safe while you receive your prescription.

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Benzodiazepines

Benzodiazepines

Benzodiazepines are a class of central nervous system suppressants used to treat anxiety, panic attacks, and the symptoms of PTSD. Previously, they were also used for sleep issues. Today, some 30.5 million people have a prescription or use benzos illicitly. However, 17.1% of all people with a benzodiazepine prescription misuse them and a further 2% qualify as having a drug use disorder.

Benzodiazepines include:

  • Diazepam (Valium)
  • Lorazepam (Ativan)
  • Clonazepam (Klonopin)
  • Alprazolam (Xanax)
  • Midazolam (Versed)

Today, most doctors won’t prescribe these drugs without a co-occurring therapy requirement. It’s also unlikely that you’ll receive a prescription for longer than 5 weeks. However, many people have had benzodiazepine prescriptions for years.

Unfortunately, these drugs are highly addictive and can cause significant psychological reliance, where users might work themselves into panic attacks because they don’t have the drug in case something goes wrong.

In addition, many people experience significant withdrawal symptoms while trying to quit benzos. Often, the only safe way to get off of them is to slowly taper usage over the course of a few weeks or months. If you go cold turkey on a benzodiazepine, chances of severe symptoms like seizures are high. For this reason, it’s not recommended to quit benzodiazepines without medical supervision,

Sedatives

Sedatives or prescription sleeping pills include several classes of drugs but most of them have similar effects and a similar addiction profile. Often, these drugs are prescribed for the short term, alongside a REMS, and alongside therapy that is intended to resolve the root of the problem rather than symptoms. However, some people have been on sleeping pill prescriptions for decades. Today, we know that these drugs are addictive and dependence inducing. But, if you’ve been on one for some time, chances of dependence and possible addiction are high.

Common sleeping pills include:

  • Zolpidem (Ambien, Zolpimist, Edluar)
  • Zaleplon (Sonata)
  • Triazolam (Halcion)
  • Temazepam (Restoril)
  • Ramelteon (Rozerem)
  • Eszopiclone (Lunesta)
  • Doxepin (Silenor)

All of these drugs are dependence inducing. In addition, like benzos, you should not stop most of these drugs cold turkey. Instead, they should be tapered off to avoid causing major symptoms such as seizures and major paranoia. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to consult with a doctor before quitting a sleeping medication or sedative.

Amphetamines

Amphetamines are most-famous for street drugs like methamphetamine. However, they also make up a large selection of prescription medications including ADD and ADHD treatments like Ritalin, Concerta, and Adderall.

However, these amphetamines are rarely severely habit forming. Instead, most people will never have problems. At the same time, heavy abuse, especially in combination with other drugs or alcohol, can cause significant.

Getting Help

a beautiful woman during her individual therapyIf you or a loved one is struggling with a prescription medicine, there is help. The first step should normally be to go to your doctor, who can offer insight into your prescription use, where it went wrong, and what the next steps should be. Depending on your specific case, you may benefit from therapy, tapering off the drug, or rehab and drug abuse treatment. However, in most cases, if you’re compulsively using a drug, you’ll need therapy and treatment to help you resolve the underlying causes – or your risk of relapse or changing to a different drug will remain high.

Prescription medications can be dangerous. However, they can also be lifesaving. Following the prescription, avoiding mixing drugs, and stopping drug usage when you no longer need it can all help you to stay safe when using prescription medication. However, you should always discuss your plans and their safety with your doctor before changing how you use or take a prescription medication.

If you or your loved-one struggles from substance abuse please contact us today and speak with one of our experienced and professional intake advisors about our detox, partial hospitalization, and residential treatment programs. We’re here to help you recover.

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