If you’re ready to take the next step and stop letting alcohol use disorder run your life, INSynergy provides an outpatient detox program unlike any other alcohol addiction treatment.
Detoxing is a very intensive process, and can be the most crucial point in your path to recovery. We don’t take it lightly. The highest priority of this step is your safety and comfort. You’ll be under the supervision of Dr. Taca and his staff, while being allowed the convenience of receiving treatment in an outpatient setting.
There will be no overnight stay necessary in an inpatient detox facility unless the physician determines that your immediate wellbeing is at risk.
After an evaluation, you’ll be prescribed the appropriate medication to start your detox and be given detailed instructions for the next steps. For the 10-day alcohol detox, we’ll recommend that you spend a couple days at your home and take it easy. During that time, INSynergy staff will have continuous communication with you in person, by phone, text, or video conference.
If you want to quit drinking and have been fearing the pain of detoxing, contact the team at INSynergy and we’ll give you the tools needed to get started. We provide a no-obligation consultation to determine your alcohol addiction treatment options.
Deciding whether or not drinking has become a problem in your life is the first step to recovering from alcoholism. Often times, it’s not easy for someone to see the problem or admit that a problem even exists. There are a couple tools that have been developed to assist with this obstacle.
Although these tools can be successful in helping you and your doctor gain insight into the potential for alcohol abuse in your life, there is one requirement if you want accurate results. This requirement is that you should be 100% honest with yourself when answering the questions on these screeners.
If you don’t face the reality of your habits and behavior when these questions come up, the results will be skewed. Denial of your drinking will not do you any favors.
Alcohol abuse causes many marriages to fail because it has a ripple effect across a person’s network of family, friends, employers, and colleagues. The entire family is especially affected because people who drink:
If it feels like your spouse chooses alcohol over you,
INSynergy can help.
If your drinking is damaging your marriage,
INSynergy can help
This is a very simple and short screening tool. Although it doesn’t dive too deep into the details of your habits, it can be a good starting point for many to gain needed insight into their addiction.
This screening tool is derived as an acronym from the four questions within the tool:
Cut down
Annoyed
Guilty
Eye-opener
Answers to the following four questions on the screener can help you determine if a substance abuse problem exists and needs to be addressed:
Honesty within yourself is a key driving factor in your addiction recovery.
12 fluid ounces
5-7% alcohol
5 fluid ounces
12% alcohol
1.5 fluid ounces
40% alcohol
This is a 10-item screening tool developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to assess alcohol consumption, drinking behaviors, and alcohol-related problems. There are 2 components to the AUDIT screening; the clinician interview version and the self-report version.
The way it’s scored is, you pick 1 answer for each question that relates to your drinking. Each question has a list of answers; each with a number value. The answers are scored like this:
Answer 1 = 0
Answer 2 = 1
Answer 3 = 2
Answer 4 = 3 (if applicable)
Answer 5 = 4 (if applicable)
Once you answer the 10 questions, you simply add up the score of your answers. Below are the 10 questions for the AUDIT self-report version:
0-7: lower risk
8-15: increasing risk
16-19: higher risk
20+: possible dependence
If the answers to some of the questions above on either screener have caused you to question whether or not your alcohol consumption has become excessive, the team at INSynergy can provide you with a thorough clinical assessment.
While alcohol abuse can have an impacting negative affect on your personal life – including your job, friends, and family – it is widely known that there are a great deal of adverse health effects associated with excessive alcohol consumption.
There is a significant list of alcohol’s effects on the body, which all lead to either putting yourself in harm’s way on a psychological level or physical level:
Naltrexone blocks opioid receptors that are involved in the rewarding effects of drinking and the craving for alcohol. It reduces relapse to heavy drinking, defined as four or more drinks per day for women and five or more for men.
Naltrexone cuts relapse risk during the first 3 months by about 36 percent but is less effective in helping patients maintain abstinence. It now comes in a once a month injection called Vivitrol.
Acamprosate (Campral) acts on the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate neurotransmitter systems and is thought to reduce symptoms of protracted withdrawal, such as insomnia, anxiety, restlessness, and dysphoria.
Disulfiram (Antabuse) interferes with degradation of alcohol, resulting in the accumulation of acetaldehyde, which, in turn, produces a very unpleasant reaction that includes flushing, nausea, and palpitations if the patient drinks alcohol. The utility and effectiveness of disulfiram are considered limited because compliance is generally poor.
However, among patients who are highly motivated, disulfiram can be effective, and some patients use it episodically for high-risk situations, such as social occasions where alcohol is present. It can also be administered in a monitored fashion, such as in a clinic or by a spouse, improving its efficacy.
Topiramate is thought to work by increasing inhibitory (GABA) neurotransmission and reducing stimulatory (glutamate) neurotransmission. Its precise mechanism of action in treating alcohol addiction is not known, and it has not yet received FDA approval.
Topiramate has been shown in two randomized, controlled trials to significantly improve multiple drinking outcomes, compared with a placebo. Over the course of a 14-week trial, topiramate significantly increased the proportion of patients with 28 consecutive days of abstinence or non-heavy drinking.
In both studies, the differences between topiramate and placebo groups were still diverging at the end of the trial, suggesting that the maximum effect may not have yet been reached. Importantly, efficacy was established in volunteers who were drinking upon starting the medication
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