According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, addiction is "a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory, and related circuitry." The condition causes a person to turn their focus from their everyday lives to drugs and/or alcohol. They will continue pursuing and craving drugs, even when they know the drugs are harming them and causing damage to their health and well-being. Portland Alcohol Rehab Centers can help addicts successfully overcome addiction.
When a person experiences drug addiction, they should seek addiction treatment in Portland, Maine. Some of the chief hallmarks of addiction are:
Addiction treatment in Portland works by having a person first stop using drugs. A person can do this through medical detox in Portland, where they take medications that can reduce some of the most severe side effects associated with withdrawing from a particular substance. Once a person has progressed through the detox symptoms to a point of sobriety, they will then participate in a variety of programs for addiction treatment. Examples of these may include:
Sometimes programs for addiction treatment may be termed as holistic because they focus on the mind-body connection. These drug and alcohol treatment centers may offer the traditional offerings listed above as well as services to help a person relieve stress, such as meditation, art therapy, or music therapy.
Drugs and alcohol are mood-altering substances. When a person takes them, the substances cause chemical changes in the brain. These changes can throw off a person's brain chemistry and cause the brain to send signals to the body, urging it to use the drug again to achieve the same pleasurable effect. Drugs all work in different ways. For example, both cocaine and methamphetamine are central nervous stimulants. When a person uses them, they cause an extra release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This gives off a pleasurable effect as well as makes a person feel more alert and awake. However, methamphetamine causes more dopamine release than cocaine, which is why methamphetamine can be especially addictive.
Drugs like painkillers and heroin as well as alcohol are all central nervous system depressants. They slow down the central nervous system, causing a person to feel sleepy as well as experience the sense of euphoria they often feel when using drugs. Alcohol increases the amount of the neurotransmitter GABA in the brain, which has sedative effects.
Addiction treatment in Portland can help a person undergo the difficult, but important, the task of stopping drug abuse. As mentioned earlier, addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. Just as other diseases, such as high blood pressure, require medical treatment, so does addiction. Sometimes a person requires the help and services of medical experts at drug and alcohol treatment centers who know what it takes to get sober.