Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & MMT Treatment for Heroin Addiction

If you’re addicted to heroin and need help, there is hope.

Treatment for heroin addiction is available all across the United States, but choosing the right kind of treatment for yourself can be confusing. Luckily, there are a number of resources that can help, including your doctor.

Two of the most common forms of addiction treatment include cognitive behavioral therapy and methadone maintenance treatment (MMT).

Before you commit to either, it’s important to learn how each method works.

What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

CBT helps you better understand your thoughts and behaviors that lead to drug abuse.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that can help change the way we think and the way we feel in order to alter our behavior. It actually combines two different approaches, individually called cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy.

In cognitive therapy, you learn to understand your thoughts and expectations more clearly. This helps you separate the truthful thoughts in your head from false or harmful thoughts.

In behavioral therapy, you will investigate whether certain behaviors in your life are causing you problems. Then, because all behavior can be unlearned, you will alter these habits until you display healthy behavior instead.

How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Helps with Heroin Addiction

Because there are a lot of negative thoughts and behaviors involved with drug use, CBT can help to change the way you think, feel, and act around heroin.

There are several ways that a therapist might help you do this. These include:

Anticipating problems that might arise during your recovery.
Developing coping strategies for cravings or situations that used to drive you to drug use.
Talking about the positive and negative effects of staying on drugs.
Learning to recognize cravings before they happen.
Learning to avoid situations that put you at risk for using.

What Is MMT?

MMT is probably the most common treatment for heroin addiction. It involves taking methadone on a daily basis in order to prevent you from getting high on heroin and to prevent you from going through withdrawal.

Because methadone is an opioid, it works the same that heroin does. It stimulates the opioid receptors in your brain, satisfying your physical need for heroin.

However, because methadone has a much longer half-life and does not occupy all of the opioid receptors, you won’t experience a noticeable high like you do with heroin.

How Does Methadone Treatment Counseling Work?

Anyone considering methadone maintenance treatment has likely made multiple attempts to stop using opiates, having gone in and out of drug rehab programs with little to no progress to show for it. Chronic opiate addiction impacts most every area of a person’s life in harmful ways. This is especially true when it comes to the ….

How MMT Helps With Heroin Addiction

In particular, MMT can work wonders as a treatment for heroin addiction. In particular, it can:

Reduce your likelihood of contracting HIV or AIDS, as it is taken orally.
Improve your overall health, as there is a very small chance of overdose due to strict regulations around methadone dispensing.
Improve your daily life by reducing your criminal activity.
Improve your social life and employment opportunities.

While CBT and MMT are two great therapies on their own, they are most effective when combined. MMT tackles the physical source of your addiction, while CBT attacks the mental and emotional addiction you have to heroin.

With these two treatments in your repertoire, you’ll greatly reduce your chance of relapsing.

Ready to begin your recovery journey? Call 800-678-5931(Paid Advertiser) to learn about available treatment programs for drug and alcohol addiction.