Honeychurch Medical Center offers friendly, discrete, individualized Opioid Addiction Therapy. This therapy is a medically assisted Narcotic/Opiate outpatient withdrawal program which includes maintenance and taper plans.
Recovery Support/Financial Assistance
If you need financial assistance, please contact the wonderful people at:
RASE is a non profit organization that provides Recovery Support Services and financial assistance.
You can call them at 321.305.4397
Email them at info@raseproject.org
Visit their website at www.raseproject.org
Or go by and say “Hi!”
1600 Sarno Rd Suite 115
Melbourne, FL 3293
What is an Opioid?
An Opioid is a drug that is used to relieve severe pain. There are many types that your doctor
can use to help with severe injuries like broken bones, and for use before, during and after a
procedure or surgery.
What types of Opioids are there?
Just like cars, there are may types, but at the end of the day, they do the same thing. Relieve
pain.
Types of Opioids
Codeine
Fentanyl (Duragesic, Sublimaze)
Heroin (Diamorphine)
Hydrocodone
Hydromorphone (Dilaudid)
Meperidine (Demoral)
Methadone (Dolophine)
Morphine (MS Contin)
Oxycodone (OxyContin)
Oxymorphone (Opana)
Propoxyphene (Darvon)
Some of these Opioids can be taken by mouth (oral), and some can also be given intravenously
(IV).
How do Opioids relieve pain?
If you accidentally poke your finger on a sharp needle, it HURTS! OUCH! But why?
Why does your brain know that your finger is injured?
Well, we have lots of nerves in our fingertips, and if they detect an injury, they send this
information up the arm, to the spinal cord, and then it relays this signal to the brain. (This
happens very very fast, like over 200 miles per hour.)
The brain interprets this signal as PAIN, and immediately sends back another signal to your
arm to REMOVE YOUR FINGER! Then your arm jerks back so you don’t continue to get
poked by the needle.
So PAIN actually is GOOD, because it protects your body from worsening injury.
What Opioids do, is temporarily block this pain signal to the brain.
How EXACTLY do the Opioids block the pain signal to the brain?
It’s complicated, but here’s a simple answer:
Our nerves communicate with each other, from our arms and legs, to the spinal cord to the
brain, and opioids simply interfere with this communication.
(There are several good Youtube videos on this if you want to dive deeper.)
What are the side effects of Opioids?
As we talked about, the effect of Opioids is to blunt pain. But they also have side effects, some
of them are pleasurable (thus the addictive properties) and some serious and even life
threatening.
There are 3 main receptors in our nerve endings that the opioids bind to:
The Mu receptor
The Delta receptor
The Kappa receptor
When an Opioid binds to a Mu receptor in the nerve, it causes:
– Analgesia (pain relief)
– Euphoria (a good feeling)
– Sedation (relaxation)
– Respiratory depression (too much will cause a person to stop breathing and die! This is how people die from excessive Opioid use)
When an Opioid binds to a Delta receptor in the nerve, it causes:
-Hallucinations
When a Opioid binds to a Kappa receptor in the nerve, it causes:
-Dysphoria (feeling of being unwell, or unhappy)
If you, a friend or loved one has an opioid addiction, then call us or make an appointment today.
With Suboxone you can get your life back, and be the productive happy person you were meant to be!
