Medical detox at Aasra

What detox actually is

Detox means getting the drug out of the body safely while the withdrawal is controlled with medicine and supervision. Depending on what was being used, it takes anywhere from a few days to about two weeks.

Done properly it is not a punishment. The patient is given medication for the symptoms, fluids where needed, and somebody is awake with him at night. Nobody is restrained or beaten. If any centre tells you otherwise, leave.

Where it is genuinely dangerous

Alcohol and the benzodiazepine family of sleep and anxiety tablets are the two that can kill on sudden withdrawal, through seizures and in severe cases delirium. Those must be medically supervised.

Opioid withdrawal from chitta, smack or doda is not usually fatal by itself, but it is severe, and dehydration from repeated vomiting and diarrhoea can become dangerous in a weak patient.

Why detox alone is not treatment

This is the single most useful thing on this page. Detox clears the body. It does nothing about the reason the person started, the friends he sits with, the depression underneath, or the habit of reaching for something when life gets hard.

A ten or fifteen day admission that is only detox is why so many families tell us he was fine for three weeks and then it started again. It is not that he failed. It is that he was only given the first step.

What happens after detox here

Psychiatric assessment by our own consultant, then about four months of residential rehabilitation with daily counselling, family sessions and a fixed routine. You can see the full daily timetable on our home page.

Before you call

It helps if you know roughly how long it has been going on, how much he is taking, whether he has been admitted anywhere before, and whether there have been fits or blackouts. Bring any medicines and reports with you. None of it is essential. Ring us either way.

Nothing you tell us goes anywhere else. No name and no photograph leaves this centre without written permission from the family.

Where this information comes from

This page is written at the centre and checked by our consultant psychiatrist before it goes up. Where we describe how a drug behaves or how withdrawal works, we follow published guidance from bodies such as the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre at AIIMS, and the World Health Organization. You can read our editorial policy.