Heroin Addiction Treatment Center
Heroin Addiction Treatment Center
As an Orange County heroin addiction rehab center, Oceanfront Recovery is focused on helping men and women safely overcome addiction to dangerous substances like heroin. We are dedicated to healing those struggling with heroin abuse because we know that drugs like heroin can take a heavy toll on the mind, body, and soul, as well as on family and other loved ones. Through helping our clients understand the psychological causes that lie at the root of their addiction, we offer a sustainable recovery that treats drug abuse deeply and completely at our heroin addiction treatment center. Individuals will be assessed by our experts and placed into the best substance abuse treatment programs in California for them.
The Dangers of Heroin Addiction
When it comes to drugs, heroin is one of the most powerful, dangerous, and frightening illicit substances today. It has one of the highest rates of fatal overdoses, and it is highly addictive due to its potent effects and users’ tendency to develop tolerance relatively quickly. Heroin can be snorted, smoked, or injected and can be found in both white or brown powder form as well as a dark sticky substance called black tar heroin.
Heroin belongs to a class of drugs known as opiates, which are typically used as sedatives or painkillers because they decrease activity in the central nervous system. Opiates are known as depressive drugs because they depress, or slow down, most of the reactions that occur in your brain. Heroin’s depressive effects create an intense, numb, dreamy high that users find calming and pleasurable. But frequent recreational use can quickly become compulsory as tolerance builds and the times between highs become increasingly unpleasant.
Heroin addicts will destroy all of their personal and professional relationships if they do not get help at a professional heroin addiction rehab center like Oceanfront in Orange County.
Heroin in the Brain
Heroin is a powerful opioid that hijacks your brain’s natural reward system, leading to cravings, dependence, and ultimately, addiction. Understanding how heroin impacts the brain can help explain why it’s so difficult to stop using without professional help.
Your brain has natural pathways designed to respond to opiates like heroin. Your body even produces its own versions of these chemicals—called endogenous opioids—such as endorphins, which are released when you exercise, laugh, or experience something pleasurable. These natural chemicals help regulate pain, pleasure, and reward.
The First High: How Heroin Hooks the Brain
When someone uses heroin, it mimics these natural opioids and floods the brain’s reward system. The result? A powerful feeling of calm, euphoria, and pain relief.
At first, the high may feel similar to the pleasure from natural activities—but far more intense. This “shortcut” to pleasure trains the brain to crave heroin, which is the first step toward addiction.
Tolerance and Rewiring the Brain
With repeated use, the brain becomes overwhelmed by the flood of heroin. It stops producing enough of its own feel-good chemicals and rewires itself to rely on the drug.
Once the effects wear off, these pathways are left empty—triggering a comedown or crash. To avoid this, the brain begins demanding more heroin more often, which is how tolerance builds.
The Withdrawal Cycle
As tolerance grows, the brain’s natural pleasure system breaks down. It becomes difficult—sometimes impossible—to feel “normal” without heroin.
Between highs, a person may experience severe withdrawal symptoms, such as:
These intense symptoms can push someone to use again—not just to feel good, but to stop feeling awful.
The Cost of Addiction
As heroin becomes the brain’s primary focus, everything else—family, work, health, and relationships—starts to fall away. Many turn to risky or illegal behavior just to maintain the habit.
But there is a way out.
At Oceanfront Recovery’s heroin addiction treatment center in Laguna Beach, California, we offer medically monitored detox and holistic therapies that help heal the brain and body. Our dual diagnosis programs also address underlying mental health issues, helping you rebuild your life from the inside out.
Heroin Overdose
The mental effects of heroin feel calming, but the depressive or slowing effects extend to the body, too. As your brain relaxes into the high, your body responds by slowing your breathing and your heart rate as if you were sleeping. Taking too much heroin leads to dangerously low blood pressure, shallow breathing, and a slowed heart rate. If help isn’t found quickly, overdosing can be fatal — your breath and your heart can come to a complete stop or slow enough to stop supplying the necessary blood flow to your brain.
Heroin overdoses led to over 15,000 deaths in the United States in 2017 alone. According to a recent CDC study, these rates have been rising steadily since the early 2000s — between 2008 and 2016, the number of recorded deaths due to heroin overdose increased from 1 in 100,000 to nearly 5 in 100,000. Adults aged 25 to 54 are currently at the highest risk.
The real danger is that overdosing on heroin is difficult to predict or correct for. Since users build a tolerance to heroin, they continue to use more and more of the drug, often without paying attention to exactly how much they are taking each time. What’s more, heroin is unregulated, which means that when users buy it, they cannot tell its strength or what it contains. Many heroin suppliers add other substances that appear similar to powdered heroin, from flour to crushed low-grade painkillers, to their product so that they can sell more. They know that heroin users will not be picky and won’t question the contents of what they buy. It’s crucial that a heroin addict seeks an appropriate heroin addiction treatment center as soon as possible — it truly could be the difference between life and death.
Signs of Heroin Addiction
Heroin addiction is difficult to hide. A person often seems to go through a complete personality change as everything they once cared for or prioritized takes a backseat to their drug habit. Heroin can have physical effects as well, especially with long-term use. If you’re concerned about a loved one, watch for some of these signs, and be sure to seek help immediately from a heroin addiction treatment center if you think their behavior is pointing toward heroin addiction.
The best way to find out if heroin is a problem in your life or the life of a loved one is to talk to a healthcare provider. A doctor, mental health professional, addiction specialist, or counselor can connect you with the right resources to get the help you need.
Heroin Addiction Treatment Center In Laguna Beach
At Oceanfront Recovery, our heroin addiction treatment center can save your life or the life of your loved one. We are here to help you at every step of the recovery process, from detox to your transition into independent living and beyond. Our heroin addiction rehab program enables you to get safely through physical withdrawal symptoms with medically monitored detox and moves on to address the painful psychological issues that first brought on your addiction through individualized and holistic therapies. When we treat your addiction by reaching to the root of the problem, we know that you will never need to use heroin to cope with your difficulties again.
Oceanfront Recovery also specializes in treating dual diagnoses of both addiction and underlying mental health disorders. Our California mental health therapists and counselors are qualified to address and treat both of these factors to help you create the ideal heroin treatment plan for your needs.
Clients at Oceanfront Recovery in Laguna Beach, California, will get the best individual and group counseling to help them recover at the heroin addiction treatment center. Oceanfront Recovery favors a holistic therapy approach that treats the whole person rather than just the addiction itself. We work toward this goal through a variety of therapy and treatment options, including cognitive behavioral therapy, individual and group therapy, meditation and mindfulness, experiential therapies, and more.
Contact Oceanfront Recovery
Oceanfront Recovery welcomes adult men and women struggling with addiction to drugs or alcohol to join us on our mission of healing. Our beautiful location in Laguna Beach, California, is the perfect setting for you to focus on getting better at our heroin addiction treatment center. Contact us today to find out how we can help. Call (877) 297-2997 to take back your life.