Looking for help for a story involving heroin rehab

[MisatosPenPen]

I know almost nothing about rehab and was hoping someone could help me out. It's a Naruto yaoi fanfic where Sasuke's been thrown into rehab by his brother and meets Kakashi (a fellow addict) and Naruto (a councilor).

What are some withdrawal he would go through and some therapies and such to help get them clean of heroin?

I'll be happy to share writing duties or do most of the writing.

[pippychick]

Hey,

I've never taken it, but my brother did (while he was alive). I've seen him go 'cold turkey' because I once booked us into a caravan in the middle of nowhere and stayed with him.

Withdrawal is not nice. Aches, pains, high temperature, shivers, fever.

As for therapies, he might be prescribed a beta blocker, which would stop heroin having an effect on his system. He could be prescribed a heroin replacement, like methadone. He could be enrolled into a twelve step style program like Narcotics Anonymous with meetings held on site.

And, Naruto would be a counsellor, not a councillor.

Good luck with the fic!

dafdes

[MisatosPenPen]

Thanks. Sorry to hear about your brother.

I have him going cold turkey, going through a twelve stop like thing which is one reason I wanted to write it because I'm agnostic and the twelve step is sort of reliant on believing in a higher power and I have Sasuke as an agnostic.

[pippychick]

Ah... the Higher Power concept. It isn't God, unless you want it to be. So they say.

Well, I'm guessing you know what the twelve steps are. I'm an atheist, but I believe in twelve step programmes. I'd amend 'higher power' to say 'something more powerful than me' which opens it up to lots of interpretations: the sun, the sea, the earth's gravitational pull. Let it be as literal as you want. Let it be mindless. It really doesn't matter as long as you keep it in mind long enough to go through step three. And, to be fair, it doesn't matter either if you believe it's going to work or not. No matter how wacky that step three seems, or how stupid you feel when you do it, as long as you say it, it works.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's really part of step one, psychologically speaking. If you're at the point where regardless of feeling like a complete idiot, you're still prepared to say it out loud, then you're likely desperate enough to go on with the rest of the steps, which are the most important. The moral inventory and confession of that with a sponsor is incredibly freeing. All the steps, taken together, are really the psychological equivalent of a proletariat revolution. It sweeps everything away, and teaches you how to start again.

The issues I have with twelve step programs is that the only people who will benefit from them are people who absolutely have got step one right, and, they do have a tendency to induce euphoric mania in some.

If you really want to research, get hold of a copy of the Blue Book. In fact, there must be one online somewhere...

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm

You will probably find chapter five and six the most useful, though the chapter to agnostics isn't particularly helpful imho. But it was written a long time ago now.

Sorry that was a long post. Hope it helps a bit.

dafdes

[MisatosPenPen]

I've done some research on the 12 steps and it really does irk some atheists and I read on article about how there are more and more non-religious AA groups. I'm agnostic and a friend of mine is atheist. That kind of thing doesn't offend me as much as they do him (he's a member of the freedom from religion group and a few others, almost militant about it, I'm like whatever). But when I was reading about it, it did seem like something that would rub me the wrong way.

I'll take a look, thanks! I've read articles and some personal anecdotes, but not the Blue Book itself.