Understanding Opioid Addiction

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Advanced Spine & Rehab’s professional physicians are dedicated to your Addiction treatment and recovery, and understanding opioid addiction.

Used to help relieve pain, opioids are usually safe to use when used correctly. By design, opioids lower the number of pain signals your body sends to your brain while also changing how your brain responds to pain, thereby helping to alleviate the pain that you experience. As such, opioids are routinely used to treat pain caused by the following:

  • Toothaches and dental procedures
  • Surgeries
  • Injuries
  • Chronic conditions, such as cancer

Some prescription cough medicines also contain opioids. When used as directed, using opioids for these reasons is generally safe and does not lead to addiction. A person who misuses opioids or uses them in an illegal manner, however, can become addicted.

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Addiction is a disease that affects both the brain and the person’s behavior. Over time, using opioids in a way that was not prescribed actually causes changes to the brain. These changes increase your urge to use the drug. Over time, your brain may even stop producing its own endorphins, which are the group of hormones that you “feel good,” and will rely upon the artificial endorphins that are produced by opioids instead. This leads to the cycle of abuse where you need more and more of the drug just to feel normal.

Battling opioid addiction is a difficult process. With the help of Suboxone, you can significantly increase your chances of recovering from addiction. To learn more about the Suboxone treatment program and how it works, contact the professionals at Advanced Spine & Rehab today.