SLEEPING PILLS DETOX
WAKE FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF SLEEPING PILLS ADDICTION
Data from the American Sleep Association indicates between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from some level of sleep disorder. These conditions directly impact health, careers, relationships, everyday wellness and overall quality of life. Sleep is vital to balanced health, personal fulfillment and productivity, and people often go to great lengths to ensure they’re getting their requisite eight hours, including pharmacological intervention. More than 8.6 million American adults use prescription sleep aids, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Some of the more common brand-name sleeping pills include Ambien®, Lunesta® and Halcion®.
Prolonged abuse of sleeping pills can easily lead to dependency, which can alter the brain’s chemistry and further inhibit users’ ability to sleep. If you or your loved one have fallen victim to sleeping pill addiction, Recovery Unplugged is standing by to offer compassionate, effective and medically assisted sleeping pills detox.
THE SLEEPING PILLS DETOX PROCESS
Sleeping detox becomes necessary when a person develops dependency on these medications. It’s the process by which the body is purged of the toxins and chemicals that have built up through a prolonged and untreated course of sleeping pill abuse. The sleeping pills detox process typically lasts three to seven days and should administered by an experienced and qualified team of medical experts. Individuals who endeavor to detox from sleeping pills on their own run a markedly higher risk of relapse than those who enlist the help of trained doctors and nurses. Recovery Unplugged offers a world-class team of medical experts to help you or your loved one safely overcome your acute sleeping pill withdrawal period in multiple locations across the country.
Regardless of the specifics of their chemical makeup, all sleeping pills are sedative-hypnotic drugs that depress the central nervous system in order to induce sleep. Although there are no severe side effects aside from increased drowsiness when used as prescribed, use outside of prescribed limits constitute abuse, and can result in side effects that severely impact users’ health. There are no indications that an individual can develop pharmacological and chemical addiction when properly using the drugs, but excessive and improper doses can lead to intense physiological and psychological addiction. This addiction and consistent upward movement of dosages is exacerbated by how easy it is to build tolerance to the drowsy, feel-good and relaxing effects that come as a result of the activation of GABA receptors.
Those who take sleeping pills and purposefully stay awake can face several negative and problematic side effects, including sleepwalking, bizarre sleep patterns, slurred speech, and uncoordinated or erratic behaviors and movement. Users can also fall into depressions, experience memory loss or erratic thinking, and deal with intense headaches or lightheadedness. Because of the intensity of the impact these drugs also have on the nervous system, chronic abusers often deal with respiratory issues that are potentially life-threatening if combined with other central nervous system depressants such as alcohol or opioids. Deaths from sleeping pills have prompted the FDA to add warnings for these drugs.
Although all these prescription medications were created to be taken orally, many abusers who have developed too high of a tolerance will crush and snort them while combining them with other drugs in order to achieve the same high as they did when first began using sleeping pills. This dangerous overuse can cause loss of consciousness, lasting brain damage, drug-induced comas, or even death.
SLEEPING PILLS DETOX WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS
Individuals who are withdrawal from sleeping pills experience a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms. Each person’s withdrawal period during sleeping pills detox is different; however, some of the more common physical and emotional symptoms include muscle spasms, seizures, insomnia, delirium, anxiety, cravings, irritability and mood swings, depression, racing heart rate, excessive sweating, tremors, flu-like symptoms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and joint pain. If you or someone care about has started experiencing these symptoms or any others related to your sleeping pill use, talk to your physician or seek treatment immediately before dependency and addiction escalate. Detox is the first phase of treatment and recovery.