Addiction rehab is an important first step towards overcoming a substance use disorder. But what’s the first step of rehab? For many, the first step in rehab is drug and alcohol detox. Going to drug or alcohol detox may be the most important decision you make in your recovery.
Drug and alcohol detox is about ridding your body of chemically-induced impulses and helping you through the period where withdrawal symptoms are at their strongest. These initial withdrawal symptoms can be potentially dangerous without proper medical attention, and that’s what detox is here for.
What Are Some Drug Withdrawal Symptoms?
Drug detox handles the period at the beginning of your rehab in which the influence of drugs is strongest. The way addiction works, your body adapts to the presence of new substances (drugs, in this case) by building up a tolerance. What tolerance does is shift your body’s perception of what’s normal.
Your body adapts to having drugs in your system so that you can feel normal while you’re on them. And the other side of that is you feel abnormal when you’re not on drugs. Since your brain chemistry has been altered to feel like your drug-induced state is normal, you find yourself reacting to not having drugs in your system – since your body has created this resistance, it needs to use it. These reactions are called withdrawals, and depending on your drug of choice, they can range in severity from mild to life-threatening.
Drug detox is about getting you through those withdrawal symptoms by lessening the severity of the chemical reactions going on inside you. What are some withdrawal symptoms? Here are some common ones to look out for:
- Abdominal pain
- Constant exhaustion
- Nausea and vomiting
- Debilitating headaches
- Nervousness and shaking
- Seizures
- Full-body muscular pain
- Visual and auditory hallucinations
- Insomnia
What Are Some Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms?
Alcohol detox is about getting you through withdrawal symptoms by lessening the severity of the chemical reactions inside you. Withdrawal symptoms for alcohol are a big deal because they’re potentially fatal.
But what are withdrawal symptoms? Simply put, withdrawal symptoms are the physical reactions your body has to not getting the substance it’s addicted to. They vary from person to person, but there are some common ones to look out for, like
- anxiety
- nausea
- irritability
- agitation
- tremors
- seizures
- potentially fatal delirium tremens, or DTs
Alcohol withdrawal symptoms can start popping up just a couple of hours after you quit drinking and can persist for as long as two weeks.
How Drug and Alcohol Detox Can Help
A big part of the detox process is medical detox. This involves administering a medication that blocks or alleviates withdrawal symptoms, and that method alone made up the majority of detox treatment for a while. During drug and alcohol detox, medications are generally used to help patients cope with and minimize withdrawal symptoms. Because these medications carry their withdrawal risks, they are tightly administered, and our medical professionals closely monitor patients. Northpoint Seattle also embraces holistic detox, which utilizes diet and physical fitness as a major program component.
Learn More About Drug and Alcohol Detox from Northpoint Seattle
Northpoint Seattle does not handle detox in-house, but we are proud to work with some of the best drug and alcohol detox clinics across the state of Washington. We work with clinics that utilize the most modern, holistic methods for drug detox, and we make sure to incorporate them into our treatment plan.
If we think your recovery will require detox treatment, we will refer you out to one and pick up your treatment once the process has finished, which can take up to two weeks.
Our goal is to help you successfully stop using drugs without worrying about relapsing. And we will make sure you get whatever treatment you need – even if we don’t provide it. If you would like to learn more about how Northpoint Seattle can help you with your addiction, call 425.414.3530 today.