Like any epidemic, the opiate crisis devastating the United States needs to be stopped. Although addiction isn’t contagious, the problem is spreading like a virus and it’s taking countless numbers of lives through overdose deaths. One person’s addiction affects the family and friends that love them, so our suboxone clinic in Cumberland is working hard to make positive strides by helping addicts get clean.

How Many People are Struggling with Opiate Addiction?

Right now, today, there are millions of people caught up in opiate addiction. Opiate abuse affects about 2.5 million people all over the country, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Overdose related deaths due to heroin and prescription opiates have increased by four times since 1999. Our suboxone clinic in Cumberland is aware of these heartbreaking statistics and we vow to work diligently to help addicts who come to us for treatment.

How Our Suboxone Clinic in Cumberland Saves Lives:

At our suboxone clinic, we understand how difficult it is for someone to stop using opiates, we get the fear people have about going through withdrawal with no relief and we know about intense drug cravings. Our program works to save lives through our outreach efforts and making our program affordable for someone. We will work with you no matter what your situation or financial abilities may be because we believe that saving lives is the most important thing we can do.

Why Should You Contact Our Clinic?

Our suboxone clinic is not your typical rehab because we use a medication-assisted treatment that is effective and affordable. We will never understand how treatment programs can overprice themselves when there is so much need and so many lives are at stake. Please contact our suboxone clinic in Cumberland today, because, through compassionate, affordable treatment, we will find a solution and offer care that saves lives. 301-900-5455

If you’ve heard about ketamine before, it’s probably because the drug has a long-standing history of being abused in the club scene. However, in more recent times, Ketamine is being used via infusion and intranasal spray for treating many medical conditions such as depression, PTSD, OCD and management of chronic pain syndromes.

How could one drug hold such promise and risk? The answer is found in how ketamine effects the human brain.

Think of ketamine like a flash mob, it temporarily takes over certain chemical receptors in the brain. In some instances, and with medical supervision, this can be an extraordinary thing. However, if the line is cross, it can result in big issues.

Knocking Out Pain

Ketamine was first used as an anesthetic in the 1960s on soldiers in the Vietnam war.  It’s been proven that at lower doses, ketamine can help alleviate pain and many people don’t need to use addictive opiate painkiller after surgery or while receiving burn treatment.

When it is misused, ketamine can alter a person’s sense of sight and sounds. A person can experience hallucinations and feel out of touch with their surroundings. While under the sedating effects of ketamine, a person could find it hard to speak or move, it’s also been used as a date rape drug for these reasons.

Ketamine as an Antidepressant:

Being able to effectively treat severe, treatment-resistant depression is a challenge faced by many doctors.

Researchers are currently studying whether ketamine could help people who are suffering from severe depression, such as people who have tried to commit suicide, people whose depression isn’t responding to traditional treatment and those who have been hospitalized.

The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t approve ketamine for depression treatment. Some psychiatrists are using ketamine on an experimental basis with their patients who suffer from severe depression.

In these studies, patients with severe depression typically get ketamine via intravenous infusion or through an intranasal spray once a week, in a clinic under medical supervision. In some cases, people experience an ease in depression symptoms within a couple of hours.

Results of ketamine studies have been varying, but in some of them most people who have tried the drug have gotten better. In other studies, fewer participants were helped.

The goal of studying ketamine for severe depression treatment is to find a dose that’s large enough to relieve depression, but small enough to avoid any potential side effects.

Will Ketamine Work and Be Safe for Severe Depression Treatment?

Scientists don’t know if ketamine will be approved for depression treatment and cannot say if there will be any unsafe long-term effects. If the results of current studies show ketamine does alleviate depression and the FDA approves it for treating patients, it could be ready for use in about 3-5 years.  Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health agrees and stated, “Recent data suggests that ketamine, given intravenously, might be the most important breakthrough in antidepressant treatment in decades.”

Recovering from addiction is one of the most difficult things a person will do in their life. When you become addicted to drugs or alcohol, the abuse rewires the brain to trick the person into thinking they need their substance of choice in order to feel okay. When a person goes through recovery, they have to work on reversing that brain damage while making several changes in both lifestyle and habits. Adding daily exercise to their routines helps people in recovery repair their brain’s communication system while facilitating a sober lifestyle.

Exercise and the Holistic Approach

There are countless options for people looking for addiction recovery. Many popular methods incorporate aspects of holistic healing into their programs. Holistic medicine addresses health problems by observing an individual’s overall physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing. Holistic medicine can be used in conjunction with traditional Western medicine as well as other methodologies of addiction treatment to facilitate total recovery.

Exercise isn’t necessarily a holistic therapy, but it can be used as a part of a holistic approach to your addiction recovery. Adding exercise to their routine can help a person address many of the physical, mental, and emotional imbalances that occur with addictive behavior.

Exercise for Physical Healing

In multiple studies conducted around the world, exercise has been found to reverse damage in the body. In 2018, researchers from the University of Texas UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas reported that regular exercise can reverse years of physical detriment caused by inactivity. Furthermore, they found that exercise can reverse damage to sedentary and aging hearts and help prevent a person’s risk of future heart failure.

Beyond other body tissues, in 2013 researchers reported findings that aerobic exercise can actually correct brain damage caused by drinking alcohol. In the same way that exercise protects against cognitive decline in aging and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, it helps addicts recover by regenerating cerebral tissue. Furthermore, exercise helps to restore balance to the brain’s chemical communication system and neurotransmitters. Exercising releases dopamine, which is the same neurochemical released through general drug and alcohol use. Regular exercise retrains the brain to release dopamine at appropriate levels.

Exercise for Mental Healing

Psychiatrists and doctors almost always recommend adding exercise as a way to help combat mental health struggles, including depression and anxiety — two problems many addicts come across while on their recovery journey. Exercise helps beat feelings of sadness and stress by giving one an outlet while instigating the release of neurotransmitters that ease pain and tension while promoting feelings of positivity. Anger issues are also common with addicts. Exercise gives these people a release for aggression in a safe and healthy manner.

Furthermore, exercise helps people build self-esteem as they grow stronger and more capable in their practice, whatever it is. It gets people to be social and improves health, two things that many addicts struggle with. Finally, it improves mental clarity and intuition, which can be very helpful for self-reflection throughout the rehabilitation process.

Exercise for Emotional and Spiritual Healing

Holistic medicine views people as having both emotional and spiritual bodies as well as their physical and mental ones. The emotional body is connected to one’s past, present, and future emotional experiences. The spiritual is the body’s connection to universal energy (also described as a higher power). Exercise doesn’t necessarily address these two bodies directly, but it can certainly contribute to their well-being.

Exercise is often described as “moving meditation” because it encourages one to be present in the moment. Just like any other type of meditation, moving meditation through exercise has the power to stir up deep seeded emotions from the past. While confronting these emotions isn’t always easy, having them present gives one the opportunity to confront them, forgive, and release the emotions so the person to move on to better things.

Exercise is an important addition to addiction recovery because it helps facilitate holistic healing in a sensible and science-backed manner. It heals the body physically by rebuilding tissue and balancing neurotransmitters. Exercise addresses mental health issues and can rebuild confidence. While exercise doesn’t directly address spiritual and emotional issues, it is a helpful tool when it comes to cultivating gratitude and mindfulness.