‘Four more days’: Is there really a drug that prevents you from using substances for 30 days?

‘Four more days’: Is there really a drug that prevents you from using substances for 30 days?

“Four More Days” continues to be one of the favorite movies on the Netflix platform as it tells the story of Molly, a young woman with a severe addiction to heorin who wants to recover. Along the way she gets help from her mother, who, with a little faith and trust, decided to take care of her daughter on her fifteenth attempt at rehab.

‘Four More Days’: Molly Gets Opioid Antagonists To Stop Drugs, Is There?

Although the plot talks about drugs in a superficial way, there is doubt that the film created and that is whether a drug is capable of helping addicted people.

After visiting a doctor, both Molly and Deb’s mother, he tells them of the serious condition the young woman is in, as she has had almost all the veins in her body damaged and could relapse into heroin due to the statistics, which concern both.

In an attempt to change this, the doctor tells them that there is a substance called an opioid antagonist that is supposed to help him stop taking drugs and could be given monthly once he has been clean for 8 days.

At the end of the four days, they are told that if Molly manages to abstain for another four days, she could be injected, since if she took drugs and was given the drug, her body could be in great danger.

Although many may think that the report of the substance was mere fiction, it turns out that thanks to medical advances it is possible to help people with addictions in this way. According to the National Institutes of Health portal, there are two types of treatments to achieve recovery, behavioral and pharmacological.

What drugs help fight addictions and what is naltrexone?

Drug treatment has the advantage of helping people through the detoxification stage, that is, by relieving the urge to use drugs and other symptoms that often lead to relapse into drug use.

These are classified into three types: agonists, which activate opioid receptors; some agonists, which also activate opioid receptors but produce a smaller response. and antagonists, offered to Molly because they block receptors and interfere with the rewarding effects that opioids cause.

The most popular of the latter is known as Naltrexone or Vivitrol, which does not create physical dependence, addiction or sedation. The biggest disadvantage of this drug is that patients often find it difficult to comply with the treatment, since, as shown in the film, it has to be injected once a month.

An additional fact is that although naltrexone is used to help with drug addiction, it can also be used to treat alcoholism and is given to people who have managed to stop drinking alcohol for a period of time.

Did you already know this strange fact? Tell us in the comments.

Source: univision

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