Opioid Use Disorder
If you are experiencing or afraid of the agony from opioid withdrawal, we can help you right now. The doctors at IAC Associates can use buprenorphine treatment or suboxone treatment to help reduce the symptoms of withdrawal while incorporating therapy into your daily life in the greater Memphis TN and Jackson TN areas. Our team will assess the physical, mental, emotional, and social effects from the opioid addiction and work with you to create your plan for a durable recovery at home. Patients remain at home and work while incorporating treatment into their daily lives.
Call (901) 746-9438 to Schedule.
Opioid Prescriptions
For patients with extreme trauma, surgery, or pain, opioids are prescribed to help manage their pain. However, even a short-term exposure to opioids (5-10 days) can cause addiction. Addiction creates physical dependence on the drug, creating compulsive seeking and craving when the drug is available, and agonies of withdrawal when it is not. Recently, science has learned much more about the chronic disease of addiction, which changes the person’s brain chemistry in a way that he/she cannot understand or control.
Unfortunately for many patients addicted to opioids, obtaining multiple prescriptions from multiple physicians becomes a focus. However, once that avenue is exhausted, patients turn to the street to purchase from drug dealers and often times moving into more dangerous substances like heroin and fentanyl and adopt risky behaviors like injecting drugs. Any nonprescribed use of these drugs is considered dangerous and can be disastrous to your physical health, mental health, and emotional health.
Treatment
Just like diabetes, heart disease, and other progressive, chronic conditions, addiction must be diagnosed and treated with both a short term and long-term treatment plan for opioid addiction. Your IAC specialist will work with you to identify the treatment that best suits your needs and initiate that therapy as quickly as possible.
Our treatment embraces the whole individual. We understand that emotional and social problems often converge at the same time and difficulties due to opioid addiction have reached an unbearable level. Your team of medical professionals, therapists, and social workers are seasoned experts in the field of addiction medicine and will help you devise a plan for your durable recovery in the greater Memphis or Jackson TN area.
- Your physicians will work with you on your physical health, withdrawal symptoms, medication assisted treatment with buprenorphine or suboxone, and manage your overall plan of care.
- Your therapist will work with you on behavioral treatments which may include motivational enhancement therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and contingency management, as well as family-based treatments.
- Your social worker will help identify social issues that interfere with your desire to change your life. These issues will be explored and a plan made to address each of them. We especially focus of housing, workforce preparedness/job placement, family and legal issues, transportation, and benefits eligibility in the greater Memphis TN and Jackson TN areas.
- Your social worker will help identify and carefully select with you the appropriate peer support groups, 12-step programs, online chat rooms, and/or other approaches to help sustain a path to a durable recovery.
Risk if Left Untreated
Whether opiates are obtained as prescription drugs or as “street heroin,” they impair respiratory centers in the brain. Overdose reduces the breathing reflex, causing death in severe cases. A particularly potent opioid, fentanyl (50-100 times more potent than heroin), has markedly increased overdose deaths; even small quantities can be lethal.
The Science of Opioids
Opioids are a group of chemical compounds that interact with particular cell surface acceptor sites on cells called receptors. When an opioid binds to an opioid receptor (in particular, the mu subtype of opioid receptor), the target cell bearing the receptor becomes activated. This activation of the receptor on a nerve cell in the brain (neuron) is what leads to the pleasurable sensations associated with exposure to opioids. Opioids include drugs such as pain relievers available by a physician’s prescription (morphine, codeine, hydrocodone [Vicodin], oxycodone [OxyContin]), fentanyl (a synthetic opioid 50-100-times more potent than heroin) and illegal heroin.
Our bodies produce small peptides called endorphins and enkephalins which stimulate the same opioid receptor as opioid drugs. However, these endogenous opioids (endorphins, enkephalins) are produced in very low amounts compared with “flooding the system” with an opioid drug. Thus, taking opioid drugs highjacks an endogenous system in the body that regulates multiple organ functions.
Call our opioid addiction treatment specialists at 901-746-9438. We serve patients seeking outpatient recovery in the greater Memphis TN and Jackson TN areas, including Bartlett, Cordova, Lakeland, Oakland, Eads, Arlington, Raleigh, Germantown, Collierville, Millington, Munford, Atoka, Jackson, Covington, Brownsville, Somerville, Bolivar, Selmer, Henderson, Lexington, Huntingdon, McKenzie, Medina, Trenton, Humboldt, Milan, Martin, Dyersburg, Newbern, Ripley, Camden, Paris, Union City, Southaven MS, Olive Branch MS, Hernando, MS, Corinth, MS, West Memphis AR, Marion AR and all surrounding areas.
Please note that the information mentioned above (and elsewhere on this website) is meant to provide general education, and is not intended, and should not be used, to make treatment decision for any particular person. All therapeutic decisions should be made only after consultation with the care team at IAC or other capable providers, that will take into account the patient’s specific circumstances. Healthcare decisions made without such consultation can be harmful or even fatal. Any use of information on this site constitutes your agreement to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.