How to Know that You Need Heroin Addiction Treatment

Denial is a major symptom of drug dependence and addiction. Because drug use changes your brain and the way it processes rewards, you come to need your substance of choice. That need can run contrary to your core beliefs and values and sense of self, so you compensate by justifying your substance use disorder. If heroin is your drug of choice, you are playing a dangerous game.

It can be hard to break through denial, but one way to attempt to honestly break down your behaviors and motivations is to examine signs of addiction and compare them to those you experience in your life. Honestly, using heroin in any amount is a bad plan, but regularly abusing it can kill you. You need to get heroin addiction treatment.

The list that follows covers many of the common signs of addiction. If you find yourself identifying with many of them, that’s a clear indication that you would benefit from meeting with an addiction counselor or contacting a drug treatment program.

You have regular, intense cravings.

If you feel that you need to use heroin daily or multiple times a day, you definitely have developed a dependence. That doesn’t automatically indicate addiction, but there can be overlap. If the urges are impossible to ignore because of their intensity, you are trapped in a use cycle that you may not be able to break on your own.

You have developed a tolerance.

When you no longer respond to heroin like you did when you first started using, you are experiencing tolerance. This is why you need larger doses to get high. For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that heroin users very quickly develop tolerance to the pain relieving aspects of the drug. So, they need larger doses to dull discomfort.

Heroin tolerance begins at the cellular level. When the heroin hits your opiate receptors, it inhibits chemicals that maintain the firing of impulses. Once you activate those receptors repeatedly, the enzymes involved adapt and the heroin can no longer cause changes. Therefore, the power of the doses decreases.

You make poor choices to maintain a supply of heroin.

Making poor financial choices to get heroin is one indication that you need heroin treatment. If you are spending money you can’t afford to get the drug, then you have prioritized drug use over basic necessities like food and maintaining a place to live. That is a problem because drugs should not have that level of importance.

Alternately, you could be borrowing money from people to afford heroin. If you are doing that, you are likely lying to those people to get the money and that erodes your close friendships, leaving you isolated.
You may also choose to steal to get the money for heroin. This puts you in a position to be jailed. You may think that possession is the only drug crime that can get you locked up, but there are actually 5 different drug offenses and stealing to get money for drugs or for drugs is one of them. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Among sentenced prisoners under State jurisdiction in 2008, 18 percent were sentenced for drug offenses and only 6 percent were incarcerated for drug possession alone.”

You engage in risky behavior when using heroin.

Two other drug-related offenses are those related to abusive and violent behaviors and those related to driving while under the influence.

You may feel like you are generally a gentle person, but studies link drug use and violence. A study conducted at the University of Granada discovered roughly six out of ten male drug-abusers level a form of violence against their intimate partners. Although, this is related solely to male drug users, the correlation between violence and drug use is high. If you are violent when you are high or when you are coming down, you need to get that under control.

Driving is another risky behavior. There is the potential for accidents, property damage, injuries, or fatalities. If you are driving while high, you need treatment as much for your safety as well as that of people you could injure or kill while operating a vehicle.

Another prominent danger is risky sexual behavior. Whether you smoke or inject heroin, you face the danger of engaging in unhealthy sexual behavior that puts you at risk of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. However, if you are an injection drug user, you are, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in the highest risk group for acquiring hepatitis C. Each injection drug user infected is likely to infect 20 more people.
There are many other indicators of addiction and a present need for treatment, but the ones contained here will give you a good idea of both what you are risking and what your behavior signals. Continue researching, but don’t hide behind a wall of denial and justifications.