Your choices include medical rehab, psychiatric/psychological counseling and any other option that falls between these two divergent options. One handles the physical and the other handles the mental.

The biggest problem with the medical route is that, in most case, methadone or some other drug is used to get an addict off heroin. It has been found, however, that methadone and these other drugs can be far more addictive and much more difficult to "give up". Besides the obvious negative in using methadone as a solution for heroin treatment, what about the mental aspects of the addiction?

That's the other side of the coin - handling the mental aspect. By the time heroin addiction is entrenched in the addict, he has become physically and mentally dependent on it.

Great, but with so many options available, how do you know which is the right one? What do you look for when having to choose a heroin treatment program that will fully resolve the addiction problem and bring a loved one back from a life of hell for him or her self and worry for you?

It's bad if they don't get a fix and its bad if they do - and things only gets worse and can even lead to death. Something has to and can be done about it. There's no middle of the road on this issue and the treatment program cannot just address one side of the problem.

When getting onto a heroin treatment program, you want to be sure that the addiction never returns. To give you a bit of "inside" information, here's what happens in the body.

Any toxin, and this includes heroin, that can't be dispelled through the body's normal channels of elimination, get surrounded by a little bit of fat and is "stored" in the fatty tissue of the human body and everyone has it, no matter how skinny or fat they are.

This would be fine, except that when the person gets a bit tired, stressed, hasn't eaten properly or at all, exercising, has been in the sun too long or under extreme temperature changes, which register as stress to the body, the body draws energy from the fat reserves and, in doing so, unleashes small bits of the toxins (heroin particles) that were stored.

When these particles enter the blood streams they can make an addict feel the same way he did while on heroin. The person can feel exactly the same, including the cravings. This can happen days, weeks, years, even decades later and it can start the cycle of addiction all over again.

Getting heroin treatment should definitely include addressing the physical aspects of the addiction and no heroin treatment program would be complete without also addressing and resolving fully the mental aspect. You have to address the problem the heroin addict was trying to resolve when he or she started down that road.

It, therefore, goes without saying that a complete heroin treatment program would include getting the person's body cleaned up and getting the mental aspect fully cleaned up so that he or she can have a future and you can be free of worry.