What Valium Does to the Brain

Over the years, Valium has been a favorite prescription drug for people who need relief from anxiety. For all the good feelings it promotes, Valium also comes with a lot of negative side effects. Before you can fully understand how Valium works and how addiction begins, it would be useful to learn about what Valium does to the brain.

General Information About Valium

Valium is a brand name drug. It falls into a narcotics group called benzodiazepines. Doctors often prescribe this drug for patients who are experiencing problems with anxiety, sleep disorders, muscle spasms and nervousness. The drug has also proven useful fighting withdrawal symptoms related to alcoholism.

On the downside, the drug comes with a lot of negative side effects, First, it’s highly addictive. The body quickly builds up a tolerance, causing the patient or user to require higher doses in order to get the desired effects. This is a common problem for recreational users. They take the non-prescribed drug simply for the relaxing high. Unfortunately, that high soon becomes the gateway to more serious problems, including a Valium addiction.

What Valium Does to the Brain

By understanding what Valium does to the brain, you will see why an addiction is so quick to form. The drug’s main purpose is to have a calming effect on the patient. This occurs because the drug directly affects neurotransmitters in the brain called GABA, which controls the central nervous system. The drug acts to slow down transmissions from the brain to certain parts of the central nervous system. By slowing things down, it has a calming effect on the individual.

Once this calming effect starts to diminish, the patient has to make a choice, take more of the drug or face the “crashing” effect of coming off the drug. That’s where the addiction begins. In order to avoid the crash, the patient takes more. The longer this process continues, the more likely that the patient will form an addiction.

Getting Treatment for an Addiction to Valium

At our Beaches Recovery facility in Jacksonville, Florida, we see plenty of patients with this type of addiction. Anyone with this addiction will need treatment. Also, they may well need to go through a medical detox process to safely remove the drug from their system and avoid serious withdrawal issues.

We provide all of these services in our quality addiction recovery center. After detox, we develop an individualized treatment plan for each patient based on one of the following treatment and therapy options:

• Family therapy
• Dual diagnosis treatment to address co-occurring disorders
• Residential drug rehab
• Outpatient care
• Trauma therapy
• Group therapy
• Experiential therapy

If you have succumbed to the effects of Valium and want help, time is of the essence. For the proper care and a lasting recovery, we encourage you to immediately contact Beaches Recovery treatment center at 866.605.0532. Now that you understand what Valium does to the brain, how can you risk not getting help?