Treatment of drug abuse

Before depicting features of the programs of treatment offered in our Medical Centre, I would like to say that by administering this or that program to the patient; we take into account the following: active treatment of addicts must be complex, successive, having necessary duration, with use of adequate facilities as it is arranged on the base of the united medical centre, and, of course, skilled and qualified.

The main questions asked by our patients before choosing a clinic for treatment among a great amount of “wonderful methods” of narcological services offered - «How do you carry out withdrawal? ».

Being the leading physician of the Clinic, I would like to answer at once - painlessly, without anesthesia, without substitutive therapy. Treatment of the withdrawal syndrome is only a small and the least important part of drug abuse treatment as a disease. The main manifestation of the withdrawal syndrome («withdrawal pains») its peak values can be reduced rather simply by a physician-narcologist with sufficient training. The therapeutic programs used at arresting of «withdrawal syndrome» in our clinic do not just allow «the pain» to develop. The main task of the abuse treatment is treatment of the disease itself which is called narcomania.

On the basis of psychopathological study which includes analysis of consciousness, sphere of mentality, motivation, intellectual and mnestic and cognitive sphere, emotional, behavioral spheres, for each patient of our Clinic we work out a complex individual therapeutic program the purpose of which is arresting the pathological prone to the drug. And on the stage of remission the preparations and methods which arrest the astheno-depressive disorders and disturbances of sleep are introduced into the treatment regimen. The complex therapeutic program is conducted up to the complete reduction of psychotic, ideatory and behavioral symptomatics.

Taking into account that psychodiagnostical decoding of the pathological scenario of patient’s disease is done for every patient, that our specialists understand that drug addiction dominant in pathogenesis of the opioide addiction (and addictions in general) has some stages of its development which arrange the structure and psychopathology of this form of chemical dependence, the results of treatment in our Clinic are successful enough. But they are achieved as a result of the long-term treatment under in-patient conditions for at least 21-28 days, out-patient supporting therapy with neuroleptics and narcoblockers (naltrexon hydrochloride, tetlong-250) for at least 6 months upto 1.5 years and, since the 3rd-4th weeks - treatment within the rehabilitation-psychotherapy program sometimes up to 3-3.5 years.

Physicians at our Clinic are not ready to tell the lie to a patient that drug addiction can be cured at the stage of reduction of the withrawal syndrome, we are not ready to tell the lie to a patient, that treatment will last for 2-3 months. We have therapeutic approaches to treatment of such severe diseases as drug and alcohol addiction confirmed by years of practice and we have an absolute assurance that there is no feeling of doom for us. Feeling of doom is in a wrong approach, insufficient professionalism and the information that was reported to our patients for the past ten years (treatment for 1 day, an hour, or a week) with the assured results, but thereby a patient must not take in psychoactive substances (alcohol, drugs) for at least ten days. Our patients seized by the «fire» of the overvalued idea (pathologically prone to the drug), which is expressed in pathology of thinking, sometimes cannot help «taking-in chemical substances» they depend on, even for 2-4 hours, not speaking about ten days and more. Therefore, if we speak about such a severe disease, as chemical addiction (drug addiction and alcoholism) is that takes away hundred thousands of lives, young lives annually, we, psychiatrists-narcologists must understand what we do and take responsibility for that to our own professional honour.

Separately I would like to emphasize the problem of cocaine dependence treatment. Taking into account that the syndrome of cocaine chemical addiction is developing for 2-4 years from the moment of the first drug taking-in, and the absistence syndrome has 3 phases of its development, there appeared a myth in the society that cocaine does not cause addiction. And as a result, we run into this problem at the stage of somatho-neurological complications already which have been developed due to chronic or acute (not so often) cocaine intoxication. It happened so that we are the only narcological clinic in Odessa that has an intensive therapy department with qualified specialists- experts in resuscitation. The ambulance takes patients with these complications (acute coronal syndrome, hypertensic crisis, arrhythmia, acute cerebral ischemias, convulsive symptoms, psychoses caused by acute or chronic cocaine intoxication) to us. We have a sufficient experience of treatment, both acute conditions and addiction itself as an illness. The programs for treating cocaine addiction applied in our Centre are unusual in the fact that here takes place recovery of not only the damaged system of emotionally-positive reinforcement and «neuromediator catastrophe», not only the toxic somato-neurologic and neurovegetative components of addiction are blocked; the main trend of treatment is arresting of addictive, congitive, behavior disorders that allow to get a positive result.

There is no doom in the disease – the doom in understanding and approaches.

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