Heroin is a highly addictive substance that reveals noticeable changes within minutes of use. Immediately the patient starts feeling a sudden rush of euphoria, an instant heaviness sensation, and finally a warming calming feeling takes over the body. Once the rush sensation has passed, an intense feeling of drowsiness overcomes the user. As the user continues to fluctuate between a drowsy state and a wakening state, it will be increasingly difficult to stay awake. This phase of the high is referred to as “nodding off” or “the nod”. During “the nod” phase the heroin will continue to enter trances of sleep and then suddenly awakening again.
One of the most dreadful effects of heroin addiction is that users will experience impaired breathing. This impaired breathing may cause the user to stop breathing all together, eventually causing the heart rate to slow to the point of cardiac arrest; this is known as heroin overdose. Almost all heroin addicts who fail to seek professional heroin addiction treatment will eventually experience overdose.
In many cases these overdoses are accidental; however, heroin addicts will often resort to suicide by overdose to escape the depressive trauma of the addict lifestyle.
More often than not, heroin overdose will result in certain death. Addiction treatment professionals suggest the abuse level of heroin is determined by the basis of the tolerance level of the addict. In other words, over time, the addict will require increasing amount of heroin to feel high. While the addict is constantly increasing the dosage, the potential for overdose is also increasing.
Heroin addiction is a very serious problem and needs to be treated professionally; otherwise the addict stands very little chance of recovery. Even in the event the addict receives heroin addiction treatment, historically most programs have held a very low success rate; hence the thousands of addicts dying of overdose each year. However, while most heroin addiction treatment programs are failures, there are some treatment protocols that have great success. This is why it is very important to thoroughly research the available treatment providers; specifically Ibogaine treatment providers as they seem to have the highest success rate in treating drug addiction.
