Detox, the more common name for drug detoxification, is the process where the addictive drugs or agents are flushed out of a patient’s body. The process uses drugs and medical practitioners to rapidly remove the agents from someone’s system. This is not a complete cure to addiction, but instead more of a physical way to speed up and clean up the actual body of the patient, however the psychological addiction, as well as social or behavioral issues, will remain.
The actual process can be broken down into three main parts, evaluation, stabilization and a third part where the patient is moved on to other treatments. Evaluation is just as it sounds, clinicians evaluate the patient, not only to see how much drugs are in their system, but also check for other risks or possible diagnoses. Stabilization is the actual process of detoxification, where a drug user is guided through cleaning out their body, either with or without the help of drugs. Some of the drugs used may also come with anesthesia to combat the pains of physical withdrawal that a patient suffers. Finally, the third step is preparation for the victim to move on in their recovery process, such as enrolling in a rehabilitation program to manage the psychological or behavioral addiction that is still lingering.
While this level of detoxification has been shown to help with strictly physical addiction over the short term, it must be stressed that detoxification is only one step of the process. One cannot simply enter into detox and be clean of drug addiction like that, but they must also participate in all the other programs to fully break the addition. Family and friends support is also important, both during the detoxification and after. There is no one perfect way to stop addiction, but on a physical level, detox can be one part of a recovering addict’s path to recovery.