Sunday, 8 January 2017

Detoxification centers in New Jersey

 Center for Network Therapy offers ambulatory outpatient detoxification and is conveniently located in Central New Jersey, Therapies used in addiction treatment are based on an individual’s health and substance abuse patterns. Options for therapy include an array of individual or group therapy sessions and are organized by addiction counselors



For more details visit  : Center for network Therapy 

Address : B, 333 Cedar Ave #3 , Middlesex, NJ 08846 

Mobile : +1 (732)560-1080

Websitte : https://www.recoverycnt.com/

Center for network therapy 




Addiction problems discussion with Dr. Indra cidambi on LI Backstory

Dr. Cidambi, addiction expert from the Center For Network Therapy meets with Moms who have lost their children to Heroin, and moms who have a child who is an addict.  





If you would like to be a sponsor of the bus from Long Island to the treatment center in New Jersey, you can contact Gary Jacobs at 516-455-6631 or Maureen Rossi at Maureen.L.Rossi@gmail.com.

know more about Dr. Indra Cidambi's Ambulatory Detoxification program


Dr. Indra Cidambi, M.D, The Center for Network Therapy (CNT) licensed by State of New Jersey is the first facility at Middlesex, New Jersey to provide Medically Monitored Ambulatory Detox (MMAD) from alcohol, benzodiazepines, opiates, stimulants, anesthetics, and other substances

About Dr. Indra Cidambi :  CNT’s Medical Director . Indra Cidambi, M.D., completed her residency in Psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY and her Fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at NYU/Bellevue Hospital, New York, NY. Previous to the Center for Network Therapy,



Saturday, 7 January 2017

Know the science behind Pain Pill Addiction.


pain pill detox
pain pill detox



Are you intensely addicted to pain pills? You would be happy to know that certainly you are not alone. The cycle of it’suse, dependence, and in use is playing out, repeatedly, in every community across the country. Note that the cycle is described as 'use, dependence, use'--a description that is accurate, because in many cases the cycle of dependence starts when you use medication administered by a person whom you trust—probably your physician.


Pain pills generally are called as 'narcotics'. It’s a term that is derived from the Greek word 'narcosis', or 'sleep' due to their sedative effects. Physicians always use the word 'narcotic' to refer to variety of things in different situations. For example, when referring to controlled substances, 'narcotics' may be used to term drugs regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA). An anesthesiologist refer ‘narcotic’ to the portion of the anesthetic that is comprised of drugs that bind to brain 'opiate receptors'. 'Opiate' is another word that is used by physicians in reference to pain pills. The word comes from 'opium', a substance that is derived from poppies and used to make heroin and morphine. The reference 'opiate'is also used for synthetic pain medication that has no connection to poppies or opium.


Mostof you must have heard of 'endorphins'. Endorphins are produced in the human body, and when released, block pain. Endorphins are most of the times referred as 'endogenous opiates' because of their role in pain sensation, even though they have no relation to poppies or even opium, and are structurally quite dissimilar. These natural pain relievers have many other functions in the body. Endorphins are one unique group out of dozens of 'neurotransmitters', the substances that are involved in the communication between nerve cells. Endorphins and other neurotransmitters act as 'receptors', the receptor being a lock on the cell for nerve, and the neurotransmitter being the key element that fits in the lock. Surprisingly, poppies produce a substance that looks different from the natural key known, but that acts like endorphins that fits the exact same keyhole. That substance, a one molecule from the sap of a red flower has helped the human species to ease suffering in countless of  elements, and also has resulted in the deaths of millions of many others.


Over the years scientists have come up with synthetic 'opiates' that has the potential far beyond anything that’s produced by nature. Anesthesiologists use 'sufentanil' that reduce responses to pain during surgery operations. Sufentanil is extremely potent; an amount equal to the size of one grain of salt, say one tenth of just one milligram, placed on the tongue would cause respiratory arrest in a grown up man within seconds. More commonly opiates are taken by patients in the form of codeine, hydrocodone (Vicodin), hydromorphone (Dilaudid)oxycodone (Oxycontin). The prescriptions for these substances are given out to millions of people every day in response to complaints of pain.


Opiates relieve pain, and work in many areas of the brain so as to elevate mood, ease tension, give a subjective sensation of warmth, and cause sedation. They can cause nausea and vomiting, particularly in patients who are naive to them. Finally, they change the response of the brain to a relatively low oxygen and high carbon dioxide in the blood, and slow respiration


Sunday, 9 October 2016

HOW TO QUIT SMOKING AND DRINKING

HOW TO QUIT SMOKING AND DRINKING
For some people, drinking and smoking go hand in hand, and can be difficult to stop both habits at the same time. Recovery must be an experience of freedom. Thereforein order to stop drinking and smoking means gaining a deeper commitment to personal freedom and live without sense of addiction.People who quit drinking and smoking at the same time tend to experience less severe symptoms of withdrawal and have less risk of relapse.

 STEP 1: Commit to quit smoking and drinking

·         Keeping a written record of the negative effects of alcohol and smoking will serve as a constant reminder of why you chose to stop.

·         Consider how the smoking and alcohol interfere with your relationships and social life.
·         Find the triggers.

·         Set goals.Be clear if you want to quit completely or gradually. While some people want to quit smoking and drinking for social or health reasons, others may do so for medical reasons or because they have an addiction. Think about your reasons and then choose your goals.

·         Set targets that include quiting nicotine and alcohol simultaneously.

·         Enter a date for each objective to realize the commitment.

STEP 2: Get ready for the change

·         Get rid of all addictive substances in the house.

·         Ask other members of your household to support keeping your home free of alcohol and products containing snuff so you can avoid the temptation to consume daily.

·         Avoid going to bars and other places where alcohol and smoking is probable.

·         Sit in non-smoking sections of restaurants and choose non-smoking hotel rooms.

·         Avoid high-risk situations. High-risk situations may include feeling alone, tired and annoyed. Be sure to get enough sleep, eat during the day and not isolate yourself socially to avoid these high-risk situations.

STEP 3: Facing the urge to smoke and drink

·         Replace alcohol and smoking with more positive choices.

·         Try to pinpoint what are the positive affects you get after alcohol and smoking. In addition, make a brainstorm about how you can get the same effect. Confronting the problem may include relax and breathe deeply, talk with a friend or taking a walk.

·         Sign up for an exercise program. Often, exercise helps reduce withdrawal symptoms and gives you something to do when you feel like smoking or drinking.

·         Enjoy a new hobby.

·         Try something new that looks fun and interesting.

·         Distract yourself. If you feel like smoking or drinking or experience withdrawal symptoms, distract yourself until you have passed the urge to smoke or drink.

·         Distracts your mind and body. If you feel like smoking or drinking, chewing gum, go for a walk, open the window or start a new activity.

·         Find ways to relax. Relaxation is the key to recovery. Excessive stress can cause a relapse.

·         Allow yourself a few snacks. However, you must choose the healthiest. Allow yourself to eat some ice cream from time to time or soft drinks with effervescence.

·         Stay focused. The better you face the urge to smoke and drink, be less likely to relapse.

STEP 4: Face Abstinence

·         Observe withdrawal symptoms. When you stop drinking alcohol or smoking, your body may experience withdrawal symptoms because they do not continually consume these substances. Withdrawal symptoms to smoking and alcohol can include anxiety, depression, fatigue, headache, nausea, tremors, stomach cramps and elevated heart rate.

·         Control your withdrawal. Although abstinence to smoking can be unpleasant for both your body and with emotions, alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous.

·         Alcohol abstinence can cause symptoms which in turn can cause severe neurological and mental problems. This may include body tremors, restlessness, fear, hallucinations and seizures.
·         Seeking medical attention if you experience these symptoms.

·         If you are a long-term drinker and drink a lot, consider you a medical detoxification supervised by a doctor.

·         Choose a method for nicotine withdrawal. While some people suddenly stop using nicotine, others choose to reduce exposure to nicotine to reduce withdrawal symptoms. There are many options available to replace like nicotine gum, patches, nasal sprays and prescribed medications (such as bupropion) while your body adapts to lower levels of nicotine.


STEP 5: Commit to continue treatment

·         Looking for a therapist. It is difficult to treat addiction on your own and a therapist can be a constant source of responsibility and support. Working with a therapist can include lectures on emotional triggers, finding coping strategies and relapse prevention and a better understanding of the emotional causes of addiction.

·         Addiction can coexist or contribute to psychiatric disorders such as depression,schizophrenia,  anxiety or bipolar disorder. Along with therapy, prescribed drugs can treat constant psychiatric disorders that contribute to addiction.

·         Get a medical evaluation. A medical evaluation can help point out how cigarettes and alcohol have affected your body.

·         Seeking hospital treatment. If you're afraid of not being able to quit smoking and drinking on your own, consider entering a recovery center. An intensive treatment center can be a great help to cope with the physical and emotional challenges of addiction and leave it in a supervised and supported. An intensive treatment program can help you decide how to detox, monitor your physical and emotional state as you reduce your consumption of alcohol and nicotine.

·         Treatment often includes intense individual and group therapy that focus on mental health conditions. You may be prescribed medications to treat and monitor psychiatric disorders while in treatment.

STEP 6: Seek support

·         Get help from family and friends who can give you support.

·         Ask them to help you avoid drinking and smoking when they are with you.

·         Search local support groups.

·         Talk about your efforts in anenvironment supportive enough and whocan share similar experiences. They can make a big difference in your attempt to quit smoking and drinking.


Thursday, 25 August 2016

Why Ambulatory Detoxification Model is getting popular in Addiction Treatment

Ambulatory Detox
Ambulatory Detox
The Ambulatory Detoxification Program is an outpatient model for them who are in need of detoxification from drugs or alcohol, with many of the aids of inpatient detoxification but in a less-preventive and  cost-effective situation. 

Ambulatory Detoxification can help patients in the treatment of   alcohol withdrawal, opiate (pain pills and heroin) withdrawal and benzodiazepine withdrawal. This is the first stage in a continuum of substance-abuse treatment that eventually leads to recovery. Ambulatory detoxification is an outpatient service that uses regularly agreed department approved medication in association with supportive counseling and other essential support and referral services for persons who are dependent upon substances and  in order to support individuals to securely withdraw from the substances on which they are reliant on. 

Formerly detoxification was only offered in an inpatient setting in which patients were required to stay at a facility up to 9 days. Rather than that a new form and method of treatment has come into existence  in the area of addiction medicine i.e. Medically Monitored Ambulatory (Outpatient) Detox. For this patients usually need to stay at the facility during day time and can return back to home in the evening time or night. As Compared to Inpatient Detoxification model, this model can effectively deliver better outcomes with noteworthy reduction in costs which seriously progresses  and proves beneficial to the patients. In Inpatient Detoxification, patients are not in real life interaction, while Ambulatory Detoxification model focuses on patients to stay and be comfortable in  home environment. Compared to Inpatient Detoxification, Ambulatory detox model allows patients to stay in touch with society, children, friends, etc. It allows modified medication titration for luxury and ease to the patients.

The main advantage of Ambulatory Detox is that the patients learn to get over with their inhibition and puts themselves to home environment in real time and make progress to stay  sober in their living
atmosphere. Ambulatory Detox also allows clients to be in touch with work, society, school and family while experiencing the detoxification process. 

In these lines, Center for Network Therapy, Recovery CNT, the first facility in New Jersey provides Ambulatory Detoxification services some of which are detoxification from alcohol, benzodiazepines and opiate detoxification. All detox-related medications like Buprenorphine (Suboxone), Librium, Valium etc. are provided by CNT at no cost to the clients. CNT accepts individuals in severe alcohol withdrawal, opiate withdrawal and benzodiazepine withdrawal. Length of stay is around 7 to 14 days, but the client can go home each night. 

The Ambulatory Detox program is structured and planned and clients are at the facility from 9 am to 5 and 9 am to 4 pm on weekends and holidays. Group and individual treatment forms a part of everyday programming. Due to superior and high quality treatment provided by CNT with the help of experienced nurses and physicians, Dr. Cidambi and her clinical team have been able to successfully detox over 600 patients in nearly three years.  

Monday, 8 August 2016

One Take of Cocaine. Can You Really Get Addicted to it!!!



“You should try everything once.” Pretty sure now,  that mom was referring to our ripe fruits and veggies and was not advising to try recreational drugs. But for many of us, intake of drugs is a bigger draw than getting greens. According to the statistics of Center for Diseases Control, 37 percent of millennials have taken up the responsibility of trying illicit drug in the past one year.




Isn’t that shocking?

As Marijuana and Molly became more of a brand, cocaine which is a harder stuff remains more of a mystique. Don't you want to know what it does to your brain? Can you become addicted to it after trying it just once? Read on to find out!

The Origin of the FOO-FOO Dust

Cocaine also known as ‘cock’ or ‘blow’ is hardly a new player. The chemical compound that is used to fuel modern high originated from Erythroxylon coca bush, leaves of which have been used for more than 1000 years.  Starting 1500s, it was also found and recorded that Peruvians and Incans chewed the leaves of coca bush which helped them to relieve depression and served as an anesthetic.  Cocaine was brought back to Europe but it was not before 19th century that cocaine was made a part of Western Medicine and the purer compound – modern day cocaine was created.
Did you know? Cocaine was used as one of the earliest ingredients in Coca-Cola. Though it was removed in 1903.
Initially, the drug was lauded both for its effects as a psycho stimulant and as a local anesthetic.
Sigmund Freud, Father of Modern Psychoanalysis, frequently prescribed it as a cure for importance and depression.
The darling drug of doctors was ruled out very soon. It became evident that it’s nature which was highly addictive and destructive, resulted in the death of patients and addicted docs. As a result Cocaine was officially banned by the U.S. government in 1922.
Cocaine started earning a reputation as a high-priced high in the 1970s. It popularly came to be known as the King's Habit. The white powder has a typical lace of inert substances like sugar, cornstarch, talcum powder through which dealers have their way to dilute their product. But some street varieties are very potent like cocktail mixed with procaine. It’s a local anaesthetic, chemically which is quite similar to amphetamine, a stimulant found in Methamphetamine. Taking cocaine while drinking and mixing the drug like this seriously ups the odds of overdo. And Not a good cocktail? Is it?
Today Cocaine has been classified as a Schedule II drug, as it has a high potential for abuse. But still it can be administrated by a doctors for genuine medical reasons like as a local anesthetic or typically in paste form, or for some surgeries. (It’s uncommon, but still above board.)

Cock popularly known as the “Champagne of Drugs”, was something admired in the hard-partying between 80s and 90s and it still remains as one of the most expensive drug per gram in the world. Today also it remains pretty much steady over the 21st century.
The Science Behind This Crisscrossing Dynamite
Cocaine is a psychoactive drug, capable of directly altering brain functions causing changes in mood, perception and consciousness  whether it may be  smoked, shot or snorted. Cocaine seems so lovely that you won't stop it. Think how a child is fond of chocolates and sweets.
“That’s why people start binging, so they can sustain their more intense highs.” as reasoned by Dr. Indra Cidambi. The intensity and dangers of the high intake has to completely do with how you take the drug, says Indira Cidambi, M.D. and an Addiction Expert and Medical Director at the Center for Network Therapy. ‘Smoking crack cocaine’, also called as crack or rock is a rock crystal version of the drug that’s made by mixing cocaine and baking soda. It hits the brain in just about 8 seconds and sticks around for five-to-ten minutes high. After snorting a line of coke, it takes  about five minutes to go to our head, but the high is sustained anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. “If the high is too quick then it is a stronger high, but it doesn’t stay for very long time,” says Cidambi.
This cocaine candy sugar is capable of triggering massive dopamine release, the brain chemical known for creating pleasure synapses and encourages us to repeat behaviors, such as exercise, eating or having sex. Yet the high from cock isn’t the same as the endorphin rush you get after a tough workout, delicious meal or a romp between the sheets. Questionable though? Users may seem super talkative, bizarrely energetic, but also seem angry, restless and even paranoid.

The problem

Effects of Coke go beyond a brief feeling of Euphoria. You may feel a dangerous rise in blood pressure and in heart rate when it hits your system, as well as a higher risk of blood clots and heart arrhythmias. It’s other side effects are dilated pupils, constricted blood vessels, increased body temperature, reduced appetite and headaches. When it is snorted, it may cause a chronic runny nose and may even screw up nasal cavity.
Since coke effects the heart , using coke may lead to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke and a quadrupled risk of sudden death.  “It’s very dangerous and can be fatal,” says Paul, a Neurology Professor and Director of the Center for Neuro-economics Studies. “Emergency wards are usually filled with a lot of stroke and heart patients every weekend because of coke.”

Crossing the Deadly  Line of Addiction.  

The resultant increase of dopamine when we take in coke is something  a million times more than what the brain responds to naturally. To start with the behavior of cocaine which is quite reinforcing has the tendency to  replace that of sex or food. Secondly, the brain very quickly acclimates or desires these high levels of dopamine, including cravings resulting in to have difficulty to curb this vicious habit of cocaine. For most people, a single use does not lead to addiction.  “But it seems that for 10 to 15 percent of the population can be leading to addiction in one use, depending on major causing factors like adverse childhood,  genes and  especially the one involving abuse.”
Since cocaine’s high is relatively short-lived, it comes at a price. “, The crash, or comedown  takes place around 15 to 16 minutes after the last use of cocaine as said by  Corinne Laird, L.C.S.W, a clinical social worker  who  specializes in addiction counseling. “There is a a significant drop in the levels of dopamine that brain sees and depression comes  over which is often accompanied by symptoms like anxiety, remorse, paranoia and the craving to have  more cocaine comes  in naturally to save from these disturbing feelings.”  
The dopamine crater which is left by indulging in cock can leave us feeling seriously down. It’s a state that lasts from one day to up to a week. During this low and depressed state of mind, the desire to have more gets intense leading to addiction.
It’s more concerning when this heightened action which goes in your brain actually changes your dopamine-producing neurons permanently. Desensitized neurons need more of the drug to have the same dopamine release.
Though the data is still unclear on how much the pleasure-fond dopamine is required  to change your brain’s own dopamine release, it is seen that a modest number of uses (around 10) probably causes some brain damage for most users, as said by Zak.

Conclusion

Trying cocaine once, doesn’t mean that it’s your way to rehab and environmental factors such as stress and genetic factors like specific gene variants are responsible to have tie up with your personal proclivity for addiction. It is important to note that whether you’re prone to or not, this high-status high doesn’t pass through your system without giving you serious and fatal side effects.