Drug addiction is one of the most insidious aspects of our modern society, with an increasing amount of addicted individuals. If you find yourself grappling with drug addiction, then you most likely have a tough road ahead. Here are some of the things that you should evaluate.

Learn About the Drug

Knowing about the drug and what it does to your body might just put you off. Your body is a finely tuned machine and adding these chemicals into it can send it into disarray. Taking the time to understand why your body works as it does will show you what the drug is actually doing.

Sickness and withdrawals are actually your body cleansing that drug from your system, which is what it should be doing. Although you feel bad when this drug leaves your system, this is your body at work!

Reach out to Others

Your loved ones may have noticed that you are struggling with drugs, but don’t want to challenge you on it. This is tricky for someone to bring up with you, as they don’t know how you will react. If you take the initiative and start the conversation, they will be more likely to support you.

You can also read articles to get a real perspective on drug and alcohol treatment from Doctors in the field so you know what to expect if you do seek treatment. The fear of the unknown can be strong for addicts, so doing your research can help to mitigate this.

Evaluate your Drug use

Thinking about how drugs are affecting your life by evaluating all of the impacts that they are having. This can be financial, emotional and personal – take the time to write all of these down to understand what drugs are doing to your life. You might be in denial and think they’re not affecting you much, until you get it all down on paper.

If you’re struggling with alcohol addiction, then this can be really eye opening, as alcohol is more widely accepted in society. Being able to pinpoint problem drinking is hard, as you may think you drink as much as anyone around you. The fact is, it’s about your relationship with alcohol rather than the quantity that you drink.

See a Doctor

A doctor’s visit should also be on your to do list and you should be truthful with them. They need to know the truth in order to be able to help you properly, so there’s no point lying. If you don’t want to seek addiction treatment, then they can still help you with other aspects of your health. For example, they will be able to give you a blood test if there is a possibility that you used a second hand needle.

Doctors are trained to deal with drug addiction, so don’t be shy when talking to them.

A drug addiction isn’t easy to deal with, but ignoring it is not the answer. Start talking to your loved ones and think about your drug use.

The role of technology

Technology is nearly touching every aspect of our lives, and drug rehab is no exception. It is thus considered a wise idea to utilize technology for the recovery of drug addiction. As David Lee Scher mentions, the use of computer technology in substance abuse prevention and treatment has been described around a decade ago.

The FDA even just recently approved the first prescription digital therapeutic for the treatment of patients with substance use disorder (SUD). The app, named reSET®, has been proven to increase abstinence from a patient’s substances of abuse during treatment, and when used as part of an outpatient treatment program, increases patient retention in treatment.

There are other efforts on using technology in this space. To name a few, MAP’s Behavioral Health Population Management Platform is used to improve clinical and financial outcomes for behavioral health including SUD and addiction treatment. Avella’s Pain and Addiction Management Guide app on the other hand allows healthcare professionals (HCP) easy access to medication details like indications and usage, dosage and administration, etc.