Why Finding New Hobbies Is Important for Long-Term Recovery

a happy young woman found a new hobby painting

Why Finding New Hobbies Is Important for Long-Term Recovery

a happy young woman found a new hobby paintingIf you’re just getting started with recovery, it can be a lonely experience. The first thing that most of us realize is that we have lost our hobbies, the things we do with our spare time, and many of our friends. That can put you in a position where you don’t know what to do with your spare time and that can leave you feeling bored, lonely, and unfulfilled. Those and other reasons are part of why it’s important to find hobbies for your long-term recovery.

You’re probably accustomed to people pushing anything they can at you in recovery. Crafts, yoga, music, painting – pretty much anything. That’s often because picking up new hobbies can be immensely good for you, for your self-esteem, and for your recovery. At the same time, it’s also important for you to find hobbies and to move at your own pace, so you can invest as you’re ready to do so.

Hobbies Build Your Self-Esteem

Starting and sticking to a hobby can boost your self-esteem and your confidence. Both of those are an important part of long-term recovery. However, hobbies can help you to build those skills in a natural way, which will in turn influence your behavior, attitude towards recovery, and your approach towards your life. Hobbies give you something to work on for yourself, meaning you can start out being proud that you’re sticking to something that you’re not yet good at, learn to be good at things, and build your skills – increasing your confidence not just in your ability to do the hobby well but also your ability to learn new things, to get good at things you started out being bad at, and to understand how you progress at those new skills.

That’s even more true if you make that a social hobby, like pottery or dancing, where you’ll get into contact with others and you’ll be able to grow as a group.

Hobbies Build Your Self-Discipline

Hobbies can require significant self-discipline. That can mean emotional regulation and managing your emotions when you fail. It can mean discipline and practice and ensuring that you keep going, keep making classes, keep practicing. It can also mean sticking with a schedule and a program so that you do actually learn. All of that will help you to develop your sense of discipline, which will transfer to other parts of your life.

Being Comfortable with Yourself Alone

Being comfortable alone and by yourself also means knowing what to do with yourself. And, knowing what to do with yourself means having an idea of what you like, what you’re good at, and what makes you feel like you’re spending your time in a way that you want. Investing in hobbies means that you’ll be able to build those skills and figure out what is a good way for you to spend your time. For example, you might find out that you really like making things with your hands. You might find out that bullet journalling is a great way to help you feel in control of your agenda. You might also decide you like getting to move and exercise. Knowing what you can fill your time with when you’re alone will make you feel less alone because you’ll be more open to spending time with yourself. And, that’s important even if your preferred hobbies are something like watching TV or reading a book rather than making something. Knowing how to keep yourself company is important, and many people just out of rehab don’t know how to do that.

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Finding Enjoyment

Finding EnjoymentDo you know how to have fun with your free time without drugs and alcohol? For most of us, long-term substance abuse means we’ve mostly forgotten. Sure you used to have hobbies and you might even want to go back to those, but remembering how to just sit down and have fun with something or with people without any substances can be hard. Building hobbies means you’ll get to find that again, to build up to it slowly, and to learn how to have fun with nothing but what your brain produces naturally. Of course, that might not happen right away. Many people actually experience emotional blunting in early recovery, where the brain is incapable of correctly regulating serotonin and dopamine, which means that it can feel like you feel nothing at all when you think you should be enjoying yourself. Hobbies help with that further by building up slowly – you’ll start out in positions of not being good at what you’re doing and the enjoyment will come with practice -and that’s perfect for learning how to enjoy yourself again.

Finding new Coping Mechanisms

Most people don’t think of a hobby as a coping mechanism. However, once you start a hobby, even something like knitting can help you to stay clean and sober. Why? It gives you something to fill your free time with without getting bored. It forces you to concentrate and do something with your hands, which can help you wait out cravings. It gives you something to de-stress with (although that will require a certain amount of fluency with the hobby). You won’t try to play guitar and feel less stressed a week into learning, btu long-term, it will give you something to turn to in order to reduce stress and to relax. And all of that can be a powerful addition to your recovery now and for the long-term.

Meeting New People and Friends

Having hobbies is an important part of meeting people, of finding people you have things in common with, and of sharing achievements and goals. People who share hobbies feel more emotionally fulfilled, more connected, and more in-touch with those around them. That’s especially true when you turn to physical hobbies like dance, yoga, martial arts, etc. However, you can share a lot with your class even with something simple like sharing a pottery class, learning to play a game together, meeting up with a group of people to play boardgames once a week, or learning cooking together. Of course, not every hobby should be with other people. At the same time, ensuring that at least some of what you do with your free time is social can be a great way to add that connection into your life – and that will be good for your long-term recovery. Most importantly, hobbies don’t have to be about other people in order to include them, because groups, classes, and meetups are all extremely common and you can just look for one and join it.

Moving Forward

New hobbies can be hard to start. It can be difficult to figure out what you like. And there’s a lot that goes into trying new things, figuring out what you want to stick to, and then doing so. At the same time, taking that time and investing in finding new hobbies can help you to improve your quality of life, improve your recovery, and give yourself coping mechanisms for the long-term. Not every hobby will be good for you or good for your recovery. However, finding something you can invest in, can stick to, and can work on improving at will improve your sense of self-esteem and confidence, your discipline, will broaden your social circle, will help you feel connected to yourself and others, and will give you a way to have fun, while reducing stress levels. And, all of that will be good for your 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 alcohol rehabdetox, partial hospitalization, and residential treatment programs. 10 Acre Ranch also has specialty tracks like our pet friendly drug rehab and couples substance abuse treatment programs. We’re here to help you recover.

How Are Religion and Spirituality in Recovery Different?

man in recovery attending church service

How Are Religion and Spirituality in Recovery Different?

man in recovery attending church serviceIf you’re in recovery and moving into self-help and recovery groups then you quickly start to encounter spirituality as a major part of recovery. For many, that sounds synonymous with “religion” but it’s very much not. In fact, many rehab programs and self-help groups incorporate religion and spirituality separately and as two distinct but important parts of treatment.

That’s important, especially if you’re don’t share the religious faith of your treatment program, aren’t sure about your religious faith, or don’t have one. You can still engage in spirituality and spiritual practices without religion. And, if you’re religious, you can use spirituality as a separate tool from your religion.

What is Spirituality?

Spirituality is the process of relating to the world around you in a meaningful way. It’s about getting in touch with your physical self and the physical world around you and being able to experience the world with wonder, curiosity, gratitude, humility, and love. It’s often also about the search for or acceptance of a lack of meaning in that life and finding answers or acceptance for the things that happen to you.

Spirituality can mean exploring:

  • Do things happen for a reason?
  • How can I live life in a fulfilling way?
  • Am I connected to the world around me and how?
  • What is happiness?
  • Who am I? What defines me?
  • Am I a good person? What is a good person?
  • Is there a higher power?
  • If there is a higher power, how does it affect my life?

man looking up the skySpirituality is about connecting to the world around you including people and places. It’s about living in a careful way, designed to reach the goals you want. And, its about learning to interpret the world around you in your own way.

That can be found in simply practicing some religions. It can also be found in thought, self-exploration, connecting with others, and learning to interpret the world and your own emotions.

What is Religion?

Religion is, in most cases, a communal set of beliefs, sometimes formalized into a formal religion, shared by a group of people. This means that a larger group of people share rituals, moral beliefs, and beliefs about the world.

There are also many, many different religions in the world. In the United States, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. And, each of those divides into many further categories, like Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, etc.

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woman looking up the sky

Religion is a formal system shared by a group of people and may include:

  • Moral practices and guidelines regarding behavior and personal conduct
  • Beliefs about the world and how it was created
  • Beliefs about right and wrong
  • Moral guidelines dictating responsibilities to the self and others

Those beliefs can create a significant amount of structure to your life depending on the religion. In other cases, it may provide very little day-to-day structure. For example, Islam religions typically dictate prayer five times per day, most Christian religions only dictate church attendance once per week.

Religion also often incorporates a significant amount of spirituality including connecting to the self, acknowledging a higher power than the self, and a search for meaning. For many people, the spirituality aspects of religion are the most important parts of it – which is often where the confusion between the two terms arises.

For example, Christianity helps to answer many of the defining questions of spirituality by defining what it means to be a good person, by laying down moral guidelines, and by defining a higher power and what he expects from you as an individual. That’s still spirituality, because you still have to interpret it and use it as a guideline for your life. So, in many ways, religion is a set of guidelines or a framework for practicing spirituality.

How Are They Different in Recovery?

Spirituality and religion have definite overlaps. However, they are used in very different ways in recovery.

Religion – Used as a formal and defined or structured activity where you meet up, pray, work together, and study. Religion can be thought of as learning to follow rules, to engage with others, and to learn or be accepted into ideas and concepts. If you’re in a religious program, you might be asked to join prayers, to talk to a higher power, and to take part in rituals with your group. Those rituals can be as simple as daily prayers or as complex as fasting or abstaining from eating red meat on certain days of the week. It can also help you with recovery by making you feel accepted, by giving you boundaries and rules, and by giving you a framework in which you know what you have to achieve to be a good person.

spirituality conceptSpirituality – Spirituality in recovery is normally used as an informal framework in which you can explore yourself and the world around you. Sometimes that will mean exploring yourself and your interactions with others. It may also involve finding a higher power (including the universe), learning to explore yourself, and learning to connect with the world around you in a meaningful way. That can be a powerful part of your recovery because self-discovery and finding out what is important to you is an important part of setting goals, figuring out where you want to be, and deciding what is good for you.

Spirituality and religion are both very different. However, religion does include a lot of spirituality, although with a framework. Therefore, many treatment programs actually include both and separately. In addition, while you can often choose treatment programs that aren’t based on religion, you’ll almost never find one that doesn’t use spirituality. However, there are benefits to both and it may be a good idea for you to explore your options and decide what you want. Often, if you’re not practicing a religion, you won’t likely want to attend a treatment program based around that religion. However, you can attend a spirituality program with no concerns because it will not likely conflict with your religion.

Eventually, spirituality and religion are different tools. However, religions always include spirituality.

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. 10 Acre Ranch also has specialty tracks like our pet friendly drug rehab and couples substance abuse treatment programs. We’re here to help you recover.

Substance Abuse Issues in the LGBTQ+ Community

lgbtq+community

Substance Abuse Issues in the LGBTQ+ Community

lgbtq+communityThe LGBTQ+ community is especially vulnerable to mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and substance use disorders. Today, an estimated 60% of people identifying as LGBTQ+ will have a mental health disorder in their lifetime, which means that LGBTQ+ individuals are more than twice as vulnerable to mental health problems. That exacerbates in relation to substance use disorders, where the LGBTQ+ community is anywhere from twice to four times as likely to have a substance use disorder.  The National Survey on Drug use and Health shows that 21% of sexual and gender minority adults struggle with substance use disorders vs about 11% in the general population, for a total of about 16%.

The complex interplay between the problems faced by the LGTBQ+ community and mental health are an important factor in that. This means that treating substance abuse in someone how identifies as LGBTQ+ requires acknowledging those issues and treating the trauma caused by stigma, homophobia, transphobia, gender dysphoria, shame, lack of fitting in, and abuse.

The LGBTQ+ Community and Substance Abuse

It’s a well-studied fact that the LGBTQ+ community is more vulnerable to mental health disorders including substance use disorders. Often, that relates to other life experiences, especially early trauma, inability to safely manage self-expression, and feelings of being different or not fitting in.

The LGBTQ+ community is also at especially high risk of domestic and interrelationship violence, which increases risks of mental health problems and substance use disorders.

That’s often exacerbated by social stigma, shame, family rejection, and in how common it is for the LGBTQ+ scene to drink and use drugs as part of culture. The following sections discuss each of these issues in detail.

Early Childhood Trauma

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study directly links incidents of trauma experienced before the age of 16 to heightened risk of addiction, mental health disorder, and physical health problems. The scale links increases in experiences of trauma to heightened risk, with increases in risk taking behavior, poor coping mechanisms, poor social behavior, and reliance on substances and heightened experiences to self-medicate.

Because persons who are not cisgender and who are not straight are at significantly higher risk for domestic violence, family rejection, social rejection, bullying, and feelings of being ostracized from peers, they are significantly more likely to have more Adverse Childhood Experiences, and therefore a higher vulnerability to addiction.

Trauma

sad lgbtq member sitting on the floorLGBTQ+ individuals are at an increased risk of experiencing trauma as adults. This relates to:

  • Increased risk of domestic violence and inter-partner violence
  • Stigma and shame
  • Hiding gender and sexuality
  • Inability to practice self-expression
  • Stress from slights, stigma, and bias from the community
  • Family rejection
  • Homophobia and transphobia, including internalized
  • Lack of resources for mental health support

These can all result in real trauma, without considering that people identifying as LGBTQ+ are significantly more likely to experience violence outside of the home in the form of attacks, challenges, and being physically beaten. As a result, rates of trauma, PTSD, and high levels of stress are significantly higher in the LGBTBQ+ community than in the general population.

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Mental Health Problems

lgbtq community mental healthThe same risk factors that increase vulnerability to substance abuse increase vulnerability to mental health disorders including depression, anxiety, and PTSD. In addition, those factors are more likely to trigger bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder. Many people who are not cisgender also experience gender dysphoria which can be traumatic on its own. This leads to higher rates of using substances to cope, higher rates of suicidal ideation and attempts, and increased need to self-medicate to manage life. With as many as 60% of LGBTQ+ individuals qualifying for a mental health disorder diagnosis, LGBTQ+ individuals are four times as likely to have mental health problems as the general population.

Exposure to Drugs & Alcohol

Drugs and alcohol are a standard part of life for many people but the culture of drugs and alcohol in the LGBTQ+ community is especially bad. That often relates to the fact that homophobia means that homosexual gatherings were actually prosecuted by the police – leading them to be prime spots to sell drugs because they were already secret. As a result, drug use and raves are very common as part of culture and adults who are stressed and who have poor impulse control because of trauma are more likely to seek out quick ways to feel good. However, it does mean that the LGBTQ+ community is more exposed to drug use and heavy alcohol use than many other communities in the United States.

Building Treatment Plans Around LGBTQ+ Needs

Finding and seeking mental health and substance abuse treatment is difficult for the general population but often more so for people who identify as LGBTQ+. For example, one study shows that 70% have experienced stigma or bias during treatment. And, as many as 24% of have been denied care at all because of their gender or sexuality.

That stigma, plus the significant amount of specific issues faced by the LGBTQ+ community, mean that the community needs unique care built around those needs.

LGBTQ+ Only

Individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ face significant issues including stigma, homophobia, rejection, social isolation, and low self-esteem. These issues must be understood and incorporated into treatment in order for treatment to be effective. That necessitates custom programs and tracks, built around offerings support and treatment to not only the substance use disorder but also the underlying causes. Offering LBGTQ+ focused programs at rehab centers creates safe spaces, reducing fears of stigma, violence, or harassment. And, studies show that doing so improves outcomes, because people are better able to invest in treatment and not in ensuring that they stay safe through treatment.

Personalized Care

The LGBTQ+ community is not homogenous, instead, each person has their own unique and individual history, with patterns and life problems that might contribute to substance abuse in different ways. Rehab relies on behavioral therapy, which means investigating the root of problems and treating those causes. That requires significantly personalized care and treatment tracks, which may involve dealing with trauma, coping with self-esteem problems, overcoming social barriers, or learning to feel accepted. From there, you can base the treatment approach on individual motivation, progress, and aptitude.

Emotional and Psychological Support

two lgbtq membersUnderstanding, support, and affirmation are seen as critical elements of any treatment program but that is more true in the case of the LGBTQ+ community. It is critical that mental healthcare providers be able to deliver understanding and reaffirmation for gender and sexuality – without judgement. For this reason, staff involved in LGBTQ+ programs must be trained to do so and to handle those aspects with care.

Getting Help

If you or your loved one is struggling with substance abuse, it’s important to reach out and to get help. The LGBTQ+ community is significantly vulnerable to drug and alcohol abuse and that goes on to impact quality of life, mental health, and ability to live a fulfilling life at all. Trauma, mental health problems, and lack of support mean that people in the LGBTQ+ community are significantly likely to turn to drugs and alcohol to cope, but good healthcare, mental health support, and treatment will actually improve quality of life.

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. 10 Acre Ranch also has specialty tracks like our pet friendly drug rehab and couples substance abuse treatment programs. We’re here to help you recover.

The Benefits of Pets in Addiction Recovery

a young man with his pet during his breakfast at an addiction treatment center in the riverside california

The Benefits of Pets in Addiction Recovery

a young man with his dog during his addiction recoveryIf you or a loved one is recovering from a substance use disorder or an addiction, it’s a long journey. For many of us, addiction recovery is a process that takes years. But, whether you’re just getting out of rehab or have been in recovery for some time, you’ve likely heard that pets can be a great call.

This is very true. Research consistently supports that there are many benefits to having pets as part of medical interventions including addiction recovery. Having a pet can boost your mood, improve your habits, and change how you respond to yourself and others. However, it’s also important to go into something like pet ownership when you’re ready and not immediately when you get out of rehab.

Companionship

Different kinds of pets offer different levels of companionship. However, your pet does give you a companion. That’s true whether you pick a rat, a snake, a bird, or a cat or dog. You’ll have someone to talk to, someone to share your space with, and something to be there. While that can be tangential and you won’t likely feel like you have very much of a companion if you opt into pet fish, it can make a big difference in how you feel. Studies show that pets actively provide companionship, although it’s important to note that pets also have negative emotional and practical burdens as well.

Building Habits

Pets require a sometimes-significant amount of care. If you choose something like a cat, you’ll have to clean up after it every single day. If you choose a dog, you’ll have to walk it every day, sometimes for several hours a day – depending on the breed you choose. That responsibility can be significant. In addition, pets typically require regular food and water, regular care, and attention in order to be healthy. That can force you to invest in building habits like getting up at X time to walk the dog, going for walks every day, building discipline to care for something else, etc.

Importantly, if you’re not ready, those responsibilities can be stressful and may have a negative impact. If you don’t have room to add on more things that you have to do, it’s not yet time for you to get a pet.

Good Responsibilities

Getting a pet means taking on financial and emotional responsibility. For many people, that can seem insignificant upfront. However, it means you’ll have to work, take care of yourself, and take care of your responsibilities to your pet simply because that pet depends on you. Again, depending on where you are in your recovery journey, that can feel like stress and can feel extremely negative. If you’re ready, it can give you the push you need to improve how you take care of yourself. It may also boost your self-esteem – giving you the opportunity to feel good about yourself, to actively build on your self-image as someone who takes care of the things you love, and to get started with social responsibilities in a relatively low-stress environment.

Improved Emotional Health

a young man with his pet during his breakfast at an addiction treatment center in the riverside californiaPets have been linked to improved outcomes, decreased loneliness, and increase in motivation in several studies. While that will sometimes depend on what kind of pet you have, it is often the case that pets give you an outlet, someone to share with, and will offer positive mood input. In one study, pet owners showed reductions in loneliness, improvements in ability to interact with others, and to focus on the now rather than living in your head or being stressed.

Here, most studies track the effects of dogs and other animals that actively engage with people and as parts of their lives. For example, dogs naturally increase social interaction by forcing you to go out and to be at the same dog parks as other dog owners. However, they may also provide a positive influence to mood by being positive and by showing affection for you. There are fewer studies showing the same results around guinea pigs, snakes, or cats – and those animals will not provide the incentive to go walking, which means you may want to choose a dog if you’re hoping to be more social.

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Decreased Stress

a young man playing with his in addiction treatment center in the riverside californiaCompanion animals have been shown to reduce stress in several ways. Here, the most consistent way is that sitting down and petting an animal showing you affection does decrease stress and improve mood. For many people, once you establish a bond with a pet, simply sharing contact and petting the animal can improve your mood. However, in other cases, pets can act to reduce stress in other ways. For example, giving you something to take care of can reduce stress by giving you a short-term sense of purpose.

That’s especially true if you’re still in the early stages of recovery and have to build up to moving back into the workplace and everyday responsibilities. Dogs can also help you to exercise more, which will decrease stress because exercise reduces stress. More importantly, they increase the amount of light exercise you do, which offers benefits like improved blood circulation and energy increases without increasing exhaustion and muscle soreness, which can help you to feel a lot better than spending several hours at the gym. Of course, you can get those benefits without a dog, but dogs can help you to build the discipline to do that walking which you might not be able to do on your own.

Don’t Start with a Pet

It’s important to keep in mind that you shouldn’t get a pet until you’re ready to get a pet. Even small pets are a significant amount of emotional and financial responsibility. Forgetting to feed your caged pet will mean that they get sick or die. If you’re still in an area where you’re in a high danger of relapse, you probably don’t want a pet yet. Many rehab experts suggest that people leaving recovery start out with something small and simple, like a potted plant. Once you learn to care for and keep a plant alive, you can move on to something that requires more time, more daily investment, and offers more reward for that investment.

Pets can be a great choice as part of your recovery. They can help you to feel better, to reduce stress, and to boost your mood. They can also be significantly stressful if you’re not up for the responsibilities – e.g., are you ready for the dog to chew up the carpet, a cat to spread litter everywhere, or a snake to escape and force you to find it? – but they can also provide significant benefits in terms of companionship, responsibility, and comfort.

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.

What is Kratom? Cutting Edge Treatment, or Addictive Drug?

kratom-treatment-addiction

UPDATED APRIL 14TH, 2020

As the opioid epidemic rages in the United States, the Food & Drug Administration has issued new warnings about kratom. Many people have begun talking about this widely used, natural supplement and its benefits and potential risks. Native to Southeast Asia and a member of the coffee family, kratom is seen by many as an all-natural supplement to help in a myriad of physical and mental ailments. Some of the purported uses include treatment for:

  • Pain-management
  • Opioid withdrawal symptom relief
  • Depression
  • Obesity & high blood pressure
  • Anxiety
  • As an energy boost
kratom-herbal-supplement-FDA-warnings
Is kratom dangerous? Many scientists and government agencies say yes.

But many scientists and the FDA disagree with these claims. In a statement from September 11, 2018, FDA chairman Scott Gottlieb, M.D. claims:

Science and evidence matter in demonstrating medical benefit, especially when a product is being marketed to treat serious diseases like opioid use disorder (OUD). However, to date, there have been no adequate and well-controlled scientific studies involving the use of kratom as a treatment for opioid use withdrawal or other diseases in humans. Nor have there been studies on how kratom, when combined with other substances, may impact the body, its dangers, potential side effects, or interactions with other drugs.”

While there may have not been adequate study to substantiate either side of these claims, many leading scientists and addiction specialists are championing the concerns as expressed by the FDA.

To begin, the agency claims that kratom contains opioids, which is not entirely true, yet the relationship is virtually undeniable. Mitragyna speciosa is a tree related to the coffee plant, which is not from the poppy family, but according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), some compounds found in kratom affect opioid receptors in the brain. Perhaps this is why many sufferers of opiate addiction swear by its usefulness in helping manage their withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, the reasons for this are certainly indicative of the strong potential for addiction to kratom. Because kratom affects the same brain receptors as opioids do, it is essentially like substituting one opioid addiction for another one.

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Kratom exhibits a high potential for abuse and can lead to further opioid addiction.

In a study published by Addiction Biology in June of 2018, one of the two psychoactive compounds in Kratom, 7-hydroxymitragynine (or 7-HMG) has a “high abuse potential that may also increase the intake of other opiates”. The study showed that the other of the 2 psychoactive constituents, Mitragynine (MG) does not have a high potential for abuse and can actually decrease subsequent opiate intake. Since kratom is a plant, certain strains can be bred to intentionally have more 7-HMG than occurs naturally, so someone that uses kratom should be warned. The harvesting and extraction of the plant before it is packaged can also be adulterated to some extent. This could pose dangerous consequences to unsuspecting users of kratom extracts and supplements.

The safety of kratom is a major concern that has been taken into account by the FDA. In November 2017 the FDA claimed that kratom was responsible for 44 deaths since 2011. These reports hold true the assessment that kratom is an addictive drug, with a high potential for abuse that can create various health problems, including death.

These same government agencies are also warning that kratom can deter people from seeking medication-assisted treatment (MAT) such as buprenorphine, naloxone and methadone. These substance abuse treatment medications are scientifically proven to reduce opioid dependence in addicts:

“Patients who were using opioid agonist medications at the 18-month interview were more than twice as likely to report abstinence as those who were not (80.0 percent versus 36.6 percent).”National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

With this evidence aside, many people are currently using kratom as a self-administered, step-down treatment for opioid dependence. They might think this will help them steer away from opioid drugs like heroin, yet there is no research-based evidence to back up these claims.

kratom-benefits-addiction-withdrawal-symptoms-drug-treatment
Many people claim an array of benefits from kratom, yet the research is limited.

Kratom is fairly unregulated in the US and as a result potential dangers associated with the product certainly do exist. For instance, nine of the 44 kratom-related deaths the FDA claims in their report, were from a string of overdoses in Sweden, where a mixture of kratom and tramadol (4) was the culprit.

While the FDA tries to classify kratom as an opiate, they may be only partially right. Compounds in the plant affect the same areas of the brain as poppy-based opiates do. The compounds in the plant have been shown to trigger respiratory depression, much like opioids do. This affects the brains’ ability to tell the lungs to breathe and is ultimately how many people die from opioid overdoses. They simply quit breathing, which can result in their untimely death.

Withdrawal symptoms associated with kratom further prove its addictive properties.

Just like most other drugs, kratom can result in a chemical dependency, when taken over a period of time. When a person quits using kratom, they can experience painful withdrawal symptoms. The side effects of kratom withdrawal can include: anxiety, aggression, nausea, vomiting, irritability, depression and even seizures.

Kratom is an absolutely harmful drug whose dangerous risks far outweigh any perceived benefits. Poison control center calls concerning kratom increased ten fold from 2010 to 2015. Just like other drugs, kratom must be taken in higher and higher doses to produce the desired effects over any period of use. Your body can develop a tolerance to kratom much like it can for opioids.

Since the market is relatively unregulated, different batches of kratom can be wildly different from the next, even when it comes from the same brand. This is why many kratom consumers themselves, actually advocate for better regulation of the supplement. They want whole, pure leaf supplements that are not adulterated with other compounds, as these mixtures can be extremely dangerous.

While kratom exhibits a potential for abuse and addiction, many people still make illegitimate claims on the benefits of the plant. Some people are led to believe that it can help treat opioid addiction, then they find themselves addicted to kratom. Hopefully with more research being done, we can fully understand the potential dangers of this natural supplement.

What is Inpatient Drug Rehab?

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As an effective form of addiction treatment, inpatient drug rehab is intended to help individuals stop the often destructive, compulsive behavior of abusing drugs and alcohol. Inpatient drug rehabilitation involves living at a residential addiction treatment center, over a period of time. The average stay at an inpatient treatment center typically lasts from 30 to 90 days or more, depending on the severity of the addiction.
Ongoing treatment is essential to help ensure a full recovery from the devastating grip of an addiction.

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