Alternatives to detoxing

Having gone through the pros and cons, and thought about why you take opiates, you may have decided that you aren’t ready to detox yet.You may want to consider making other changes, some of which could help set the scene for a future detox.

You might want to:

• talk to a drug worker;
• get onto a maintenance prescribing programme;
• reduce or stop injecting;
• inject more safely;
• not take dangerous combinations of drugs
  - like alcohol or tranquillisers and opiates - on the same day any more;
• cut down how much you use; and
• get help with other problems that might make detoxing harder
  (such as housing, debts, relationships, illness or pain).

If you are not ready to detox, or the detox doesn’t work, a maintenance prescription is likely to make life much easier and much safer.

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