Heroin is a very strong illicit opioid drug that can have a detrimental impact on your physical, emotional, and mental health. As this street drug continues to fuel the current opioid epidemic, it is crucial to understand how heroin addiction affects your health, the signs of heroin addiction, and what you can do to overcome dependence on this powerful substance.
If you or someone in your life is addicted to heroin, it is important to get the help of addiction treatment professionals. BrightView offers outpatient heroin addiction treatment at locations throughout the country. To find your closest Brightview center and learn more about our treatment programs, contact us at 888.501.9865.
How Heroin Abuse Affects Health
Understandably, abusing any drug can be harmful to your health. But as a potent opioid, heroin can have especially hazardous effects on your mind and body. Addiction aside, here are some examples of how heroin abuse affects health:
Cognitive Health Effects
Heroin abuse interferes with the healthy functioning of the brain. This can lead to poor decision-making skills, memory loss, learning difficulties, and decreased impulse control.
Mental Health Effects
Heroin produces feelings of euphoria as a result of its interaction with the opioid receptors in the brain. Your body has natural opioids that can also stimulate opioid receptors: endorphins and enkephalins.
Listening to your favorite music, exercising, spending time in the sun, and meditating can all increase the release of natural opioids. However, heroin stimulates opioid receptors more intensely than any of these activities.
Eventually, you will no longer experience the same level of pleasure from these healthy activities and require the powerful hit that heroin provides. Without it, you may experience depression, anxiety, and other mental health symptoms.
Physical Health Effects
Heroin is a depressant drug, so it can slow down your body’s functions. This can result in respiratory depression or significantly slowed breathing, which can sometimes be fatal.
Abusing heroin can also interfere with sexual and reproductive function. Men, in particular, might experience sexual dysfunction, while women might notice irregularity in their menstrual cycle.
The method used to deliver heroin can also play a role in the type of heroin addiction effects. For example, injecting heroin can make you susceptible to blood infections and vein damage, while snorting heroin can harm nasal tissue and even lead to a perforated septum.
Long-Term Heroin Addiction Health Effects
In addition to the more immediate health effects of heroin, you put yourself at risk of the following heroin addiction health effects if you continue using the drug over the long term:
- Collapsed veins
- Infections such as HIV and hepatitis B and C (particularly if sharing needles with others)
- Liver and kidney damage
- Psychosis
- Impaired cognitive function
- Heart and lung damage
- Skin infections
Understanding how heroin abuse affects your health can be a convincing deterrent to using this opioid drug. However, if you are already dependent on it, it can feel impossible to quit. But with the help of a heroin addiction treatment program, recovery can become a reality.
Signs of Heroin Addiction
In addition to awareness of heroin addiction’s health effects, it is also essential that you know how to recognize if you have developed an addiction to the drug. Here are some indications:
- You have tried to stop using heroin without success.
- You need larger amounts of heroin to achieve the same high, referred to as tolerance.
- You experience withdrawal symptoms when not using heroin.
- You spend much of your time thinking about heroin, using heroin, or recovering from the effects.
- You have engaged in risky behaviors to obtain heroin.
Heroin addiction can develop rather quickly, so spotting addiction as soon as possible and getting help right away can help prevent the worst of the short- and long-term health effects.
Call Today to Enroll in Heroin Addiction Treatment at BrightView
Now that you see how heroin addiction affects your health, you can take back control of your well-being by calling BrightView and enrolling in heroin addiction treatment. Contact us at 888.501.9865 or online to discuss our outpatient treatment options today.
