After spending too much of your time living within the confines of drug addiction, the fact you are willing to read this information is encouraging. It signals that perhaps you are ready to fight back against your drug or alcohol addiction issues. If that’s the case, you are to be commended.
With that said, you do have a bit of a mountain to climb. Depending on what substance or substances you are addicted to, you are going to have to address both the detox and therapy processes.
Starting with the detox process, we can only encourage you to proceed with caution. Again depending on your drug of choice, some withdrawal symptoms can be quite serious. They can cause both physical and psychological issues. That’s why doctors and addiction treatment professionals work very hard to discourage people from quitting “cold turkey.” That’s a dangerous thing for someone to do without help from professionals that have to resources to help them avoid pain and discomfort as they go through withdrawal.
Given the importance of this issue, we would like to further discuss the detox process and how it’s best for addiction sufferers to proceed when they decide to stop using and ask for help.
Can I Weather Drug Detox Effects Without Taking Time off Work?
Right away, we want to offer an answer to the titled question. It is possible for you to detox without missing time from work. However, we must caution you that it’s only possible under certain circumstances.
If your addiction is mild, there’s a good chance you won’t encounter severe withdrawal symptoms. If you have been through the process before, you might be able to manage your withdrawal symptoms with the help of prescription medications from your physician. While there may be other circumstances under which you might be able to manage your withdrawal symptoms without missing work, it’s just not something we can recommend.
To better understand the reason we broach this subject with caution, take a look at the following withdrawal symptoms. These are symptoms that a very common for people who are battling an opiate (heroin, fentanyl, prescription painkiller) addiction:
- Severe cramping in the stomach region
- Tremors in the extremities
- Body convulsions
- Hallucinations and nightmares
- Severe breathing problems
- Escalation of blood pressure and heart rate
- Difficulty sleeping
- Loss of motor control
Clearly, this list contains some withdrawal symptoms that can cause significant physical damage, even lead to death. It’s for that reason that we recommend caution to anyone who decides to detox on their own in order to avoid missing work. Let’s discuss the alternative.
Medically Monitored Detox Programs
If you were to seek help with your detox process, you could get that help from a dedicated detox facility or a full-service addiction treatment center. It would only require five to seven days of your undivided attention to get through withdrawal in a medically monitored detox program. Surely, you can afford to miss a few days of work to avoid putting your life at risk.
In a medically monitored detox program, all the detox facility’s resources will be geared towards making sure you are safe and comfortable as you encounter your withdrawal symptoms. Should you start to show any signs of pain or discomfort during the process, there would be a physician standing by to monitor your progress. If your situation warrants it, they could prescribe certain relief medications to help you get safely past any problems. Once you have cleared your withdrawal symptoms, you can decide on whether or not to pursue therapy.
The Importance of Therapy
Should you successfully get through the detox process, you are still left having to deal with the fact you have an addiction issue. The only way you can really get past your addiction is with therapy.
If work is still an issue, there are outpatient programs available. With the right outpatient option, you should be able to work through your addiction issues without missing any more work.
We get that some people will run into issues should they have to miss work. What you have to also consider is how much work you would have to miss should you encounter significant issues during withdrawal. We can help you with your detox issues. We can even offer you therapy. What we need from you is to pick up the phone and call one of our reps at 844-639-8371.