Heroin Use Disorder Treatment & Rehab Near Me
Heroin is a Schedule I opioid with no accepted medical use and a very high potential for misuse. SAMHSA’s 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health counted 660,000 people aged 12 and over who used heroin in the past year.
Call 911 and give naloxone if it is available, when a person has taken heroin and is unresponsive, breathing slowly or turning blue. For a mental health or suicidal crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or chat at 988lifeline.org. The service is free, confidential and available 24 hours a day, with Spanish-language and ASL access.
Heroin use disorder responds to treatment. The sections below set out what heroin does to the body, the signs of use and dependence, what withdrawal involves, and how recovery works.
What Is Heroin?
Heroin is a Schedule I opioid synthesized from morphine. Heroin has no accepted medical use in the United States and a very high potential for misuse, and heroin produces euphoria by activating opioid receptors in the brain.
Heroin is synthesized from morphine, a controlled prescription medication used for acute pain in hospital settings. Morphine comes from the poppy plant, grown in Southeast and Southwest Asia and now in Mexico and Colombia, which is one reason heroin supply into the United States increased.
Heroin carries street names including smack, H and hell dust. Heroin appears as a white powder, and dealers cut it with other substances. Cutting makes the strength of any given dose unknowable to the person taking it, which is what makes heroin lethal rather than merely addictive.
What Does Heroin Do to the Body?
Heroin activates opioid receptors in the brain, shifting sensory perception and releasing dopamine. That dopamine release is what drives repeated use, and repeated use is what establishes dependence.
The receptors heroin binds sit in the brain regions governing pain, reward and breathing, which is why a single dose changes all three at once.
That loop is the reward cycle behind opioid use disorder. Each dose releases dopamine, which reinforces the next dose. Compulsive use continues despite harmful consequences, which is the clinical definition of a substance use disorder.
What Are the Biggest Risk Factors for Heroin Addiction?
Heroin use disorder develops out of inherited risk, environment and untreated mental health conditions, and none of the three determines the outcome on its own.
There are 3 main risk factors for heroin use disorder:
- Family history. Genetics raise addiction risk. A person with a close family member who developed a substance use disorder carries higher risk themselves.
- Environmental factors. Growing up where drugs are readily available, or living among people who use them, raises risk independently of genetics.
- Untreated mental health conditions. A person with depression or anxiety who self-medicates with heroin develops what clinicians call a co-occurring disorder. Treating one without the other produces incomplete outcomes.
All three factors raise risk without determining it, and heroin use disorder develops in people carrying none of them.
Begin Recovery
What Are the Signs of Heroin Use and Addiction?
The signs of heroin use divide into short-term effects that appear within a dose and long-term effects that build over months of use. Which appear depends on the dose, the frequency, and what the heroin was cut with.
Signs vary between people. The dose, how long a person has used, how often they dose, and what the heroin has been cut with all determine which effects appear and how severe they become.
What Are the Short-Term Effects of Heroin?
Heroin produces 8 short-term effects, and the first of them, respiratory depression, is what kills in an overdose.
There are 8 short-term effects of heroin:
- Respiratory depression. Breathing slows, and slowed breathing is the effect that kills in an overdose
- Euphoria, the effect that drives repeat use
- Anxiety, particularly in people who already have an anxiety disorder
- Confusion and disorientation, including in familiar surroundings
- Hallucinations, hearing or seeing things that are not there
- Paranoia
- Slurred speech
- Extended periods of sleep
Slowed or stopped breathing is a medical emergency. Call 911 and give naloxone.
What Are the Long-Term Effects of Heroin?
Long-term heroin use produces mood swings, weight loss, skin damage at injection sites, and cycles of hyperactivity and exhaustion. Tolerance builds alongside them, and rising tolerance is what raises overdose risk over time.
There are 5 long-term effects of heroin use:
- Mood swings
- Agitation and irritability
- Unintentional weight loss
- Scabs and bruises, particularly at injection sites
- Cycles of hyperactivity followed by exhaustion
Dependence builds through the reward cycle. Tolerance builds alongside it, so a person needs more heroin to reach the same effect. Rising tolerance is what drives overdose risk upward, and an overdose is reversed with naloxone.
There are 6 signs that use has become a heroin use disorder:
- Turning hostile toward family and friends, and putting heroin ahead of those relationships
- Stopping personal hygiene for days at a time
- Hiding heroin in a car or at work
- Leaving paraphernalia out, including glass pipes, syringes and needles
- Wearing long sleeves and trousers in hot weather to cover injection sites
- Declining at work or school as time goes to using
What Are the Signs of Heroin Withdrawal?
Heroin withdrawal produces nausea, muscle pain, insomnia, sweating, fever and diarrhea. Heroin withdrawal is intensely uncomfortable, and it carries real medical risk in a person with an underlying condition.
Recovery starts with clearing heroin from the body. How severe withdrawal becomes depends on how long a person has used, how often, and their underlying health.
There are 9 common heroin withdrawal symptoms:
- Nausea and vomiting, near universal
- Severe muscle aches and pains
- Cramps in the limbs
- Heaviness through the body
- Mood swings between anger and sadness
- Difficulty sleeping
- Runny nose and sweating
- Fever
- Diarrhea
Withdrawal carries medical risk where a person has an underlying condition, which is why it belongs under medical supervision rather than at home. Clinicians treat the symptoms directly and manage the risks, and long-term recovery begins once heroin has cleared.
How Does Someone Recover From a Heroin Addiction?
Recovery from heroin use disorder starts with medically supervised detox, moves into inpatient treatment, and continues through therapy and medication-assisted treatment with methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone.
Treatment begins in an inpatient setting, where a person stays while heroin clears and coping skills are built. Inpatient care removes access and removes stressors, so the work goes into recovery rather than into managing daily life.
Group therapy follows. People learn from others with the same disorder, which breaks the isolation and transfers practical coping strategies. Treatment also includes medication-assisted treatment with methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone.
Begin Recovery Now
After inpatient treatment, the next step down is a partial hospitalization program or an intensive outpatient program. Under the ASAM criteria, a partial hospitalization program delivers 20 or more treatment hours a week and an intensive outpatient program delivers 9 to 19, while the person sleeps at home.
One-to-one outpatient therapy follows, and cognitive behavioral therapy is the most common form. Individual therapy adapts to the person rather than the group, and privacy makes it easier to raise what matters.
Where Can You Get Heroin Addiction Treatment in Tampa?
Riverside Recovery of Tampa treats heroin use disorder in Tampa, Florida, with a clinical team of 16 working alongside 5 medical providers, accredited by CARF and The Joint Commission.
Riverside Recovery of Tampa builds each treatment plan around the individual, from medically supervised detox through inpatient care, day treatment and outpatient therapy. Insurance is verified during a phone assessment before arrival.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Source for the 660,000 people aged 12 and over who used heroin in the past year. samhsa.gov
National Institute on Drug Abuse. Heroin DrugFacts. nida.nih.gov
Opioid Withdrawal. StatPearls. National Library of Medicine. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Kosten TR, George TP. The neurobiology of opioid dependence: implications for treatment. Science & Practice Perspectives. 2002;1(1):13-20. National Library of Medicine
Medications for Opioid Use Disorder. SAMHSA TIP 63. National Library of Medicine