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The words you will hear.
Medical vocabulary is one more barrier, at the very moment you need one least. Here is what the words mean.
- Addiction medicine
- The medical discipline that treats dependences, with or without a substance.
- Craving
- The irrepressible urge to use. It comes in waves, triggered by a place, a person, a time of day or an emotion. It persists long after detoxification, and it is what the therapeutic work targets. See: what the body does when the substance stops.
- Delirium tremens
- A serious complication of alcohol withdrawal: confusion, hallucinations, intense tremors, fever, dehydration. It usually occurs between 48 and 96 hours after stopping. It is a medical emergency. See: alcohol withdrawal.
- Dependence
- A state in which stopping causes physical or psychological symptoms. Different from harmful use, where consumption causes damage without a withdrawal syndrome.
- Detoxification
- The phase in which the substance is eliminated. It lasts a few days. It is the short part of the treatment, often mistaken for the whole of it.
- Day hospital
- The patient comes in the morning and goes home to sleep. Workshops, sessions and treatments through the day, with no break from home or work. See: psychiatric care at the clinic.
- Relapse
- A return to use after a period of abstinence. It is part of the history of most dependences; what matters is how quickly you come back to consult.
- Withdrawal
- Stopping the substance, and all the symptoms that come with it. “Medical withdrawal” means those symptoms are treated and monitored, not merely endured. See: the withdrawal protocol, from the first day to the last.
- Substitution
- Replacing an opioid with a medicine from the same family, long-acting and at a controlled dose (methadone, buprenorphine), to remove the withdrawal without the euphoria.
- Withdrawal syndrome
- The set of disturbances that appear on stopping: tremors, sweats, anxiety, insomnia, nausea. Its intensity depends on the substance, the doses and how long the use has lasted.
- Mood stabiliser
- A medicine that stabilises mood, used in particular in bipolar disorder.
- CBT — cognitive behavioural therapy
- A psychotherapy that identifies the thoughts and situations that precede use, then builds another response, prepared in advance.
- Motivational interviewing
- An approach that draws out the patient's own reasons rather than opposing them with the caregiver's. It is the one that obtains the most engagement in addiction medicine.
- Dual diagnosis
- The combination of an addiction and a psychiatric disorder. Treating one without the other exposes the patient to relapse.