Addiction. It would seem, can there be anything worse? Yes, because it can develop into polydrug use, which is difficult to treat, has serious and dangerous symptoms.
Polydrug addiction
Polynarcomania refers to a condition when a patient uses several types of drugs( more than 1).In this case, the reception can be simultaneous or alternating. However, everyone is addicted, for this reason a drug addict can not abandon a pernicious habit in favor of a single drug.
Polydrug abuse is a chronic disease. That is, even with normal rehabilitation, relapses can occur.
Clinical picture of
The clinical picture of polydrug use is much more severe than with mono drug addiction. This is due to the fact that the impact of various drugs is summarized, has a stronger impact on the body.
How
is formed If we talk about the reasons for switching to polydrug use, we can distinguish 4 main factors:
- Absence of effect. Over time, euphoria from the drug being taken is blunted due to tolerance to it. As a result, the addict is looking for a more powerful remedy, most often combining it with the original one. So, with cocaine, patients go to heroin without throwing powder.
- Absence or disturbance of sleep. One of the side effects of addiction is insomnia, sometimes associated with restless sleep and nightmares. This forces patients to resort to hypnotic drugs, while strong, because weak herbal sedatives do not help. Because of this, dependence on a sleeping pill appears.
- Impossibility to get a drug. Sooner or later the patient gets into a situation when he can not buy a habitual drug. For example, due to financial difficulties or its loss at the point of purchase. Then the addict begins to look for substitutes with the same effect.
- Drug use in the company. Most often, drug addicts get into groups, in which they consume the extracted together. Thus, they try new kinds of drugs, developing dependence.
Often, polydrug use develops during the initial stages of choosing a remedy. When a drug addict tries to try everything to understand what means gives the maximum effect, he can not notice how he gets dependence on a whole group of drugs.
Often, polydrug use is combined with dependence on other toxic agents, for example, alcohol, which can exacerbate euphoria. Sometimes patients switch to the use of toxic drugs that are sold without a prescription.
Symptoms of
You can isolate the signs of polydrug use by looking at the background of mono drug addiction. In many ways, the signs depend on the drugs being taken.
In general, the disease manifests itself:
- extensive lesion of internal organs and the central nervous system;
- by strong personality change;
- aggressiveness and asociality;
- mental disorders of a chronic and protracted nature;
- is dementia;
- reduced intellectual abilities.
Individual symptoms may also appear. For example, hallucinations, insomnia, headaches and others.
Polydrug abstinence
The period in which a patient develops an abstinence syndrome depends on the drugs and daily doses taken. It is proved that the fastest abstinence is achieved by opiates. On average, the period is 3-16 weeks.
However, if the abstinence is manifested against the background of taking the opium group of drugs, then its symptoms will be similar to the side effects of using opium drugs. With abstinence syndrome, patients experience an uncontrolled attraction to drugs.
Often abstinence is complicated by alcoholism, because drug addicts try to remove the negative effects of the syndrome by any means.
Treatment
As with other types of addiction, 100% of the treatment method does not exist, because the desire to be cured must come directly from the patient.
The course of treatment of polydrug use is carried out in a complex and individual way, depending on:
- the sex and age of the patient;
- types of drugs;
- disease duration;
- presence of concomitant diseases.
The main and most difficult stage of treatment is detoxication of the body. First, the patient is obliged to pass urine tests to reveal the drugs and their metabolites consumed. Since the abolition of the drug is extremely negatively perceived by the patient, it is optimal to send it for the time of detoxification to the hospital, preferably the department for treatment of drug addiction.
Detoxification therapy is carried out under the supervision of doctors. The patient is prescribed medication, carries out blood purification and other medical procedures.
When the patient gets rid of the breakdown, the doctors conduct rehabilitation work. Since addiction causes psychological dependence, it is important that psychologists work with the patient all the time. Rehabilitation programs may differ, depending on the policy of the center, for this reason are chosen based on the preferences of the patient.