eli5 why can you not just go into a medically-induced coma to avoid the symptoms of withdrawal?
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We don’t do coma, but in some extreme cases of withdrawal, we do heavily sedate. The pt. can still breathe and protect their airway, but they’re able to sleep through the worst of it.
Interestingly, this happened to my FIL with cigarettes. Was in a coma for a few months and when he woke up he was past the worst of the cravings so that was that. The coma wasn’t worth it, as other people have pointed out, as there were very serious complications.
You can.
A lot of the chemicals we use to put you in a coma are probably in the same class as what you’re withdrawing from, so no help there.
Being in a coma isn’t good either. Being on a vent is super bad for you.
Knocking people out isn’t nearly as safe as media portrays it, even using medical techniques.
Most of the time when you’re being put under nowdays, you’re not unconscious, your brains just blocked from forming memories and you’re really out of it.
Lots of people enjoy hard drugs in moderation. Plenty of people with legitimate pain management needs who can’t get access to the opiates that would help because others abuse them.
Lots of folks take stimulant meds without abusing them, yet their access is restricted because others might.
You can??! But there are, of course, complications with any medical procedure. And a coma is something we literally dont understand super well, and the complications can be extremely severe. There are a myriad of ways, medically to deal with withdrawals. And 99% of them have better outcomes than comas.
Are you a Jordan Peterson fanboy and trying to find some way to cope with what he’s become?
You can. It’s just not sensible to.
Of the commonly abused substances likely to lead to dependence/addiction, very few lead actual potentially fatal withdrawals: alcohol, benzodiazepines, barbiturates. The last of the three has widely been superseded by benzos since it has a much worse safety profile without much benefits.
All the other substances likely to foster dependence — and even those highly unlikely or virtually impossible to, such as the classical psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT) — aren’t going to kill you even if you quit cold turkey from however massive a habit. Sure, heroin withdrawals after a decade of daily IV use will make you wish you were dead so the pain would stop; but benzo withdrawals will actually just make you dead.
General anaesthesia of any kind is by design just an extremely risky thing. It doesn’t take much at all to result in the patient never regaining consciousness. Sometimes they just never do anyway, even if nothing went wrong. It’s trying to bring you as close to death as possible, and then trying to maintain that precarious balance for however long as is necessary, and then trying to make you come back alive. It’s an exceedingly delicate thing, and plain irresponsible of a thing in terms of a medical procedure for an ailment so trivial and survivable without any medical intervention (except in a very small minority of cases).
Interestingly, one drug that’s utilised to “reverse” the dependence on benzos in some exotic treatment regime not dissimilar to what you’re asking, is flumazenil. Flumazenil acts as an antidote for benzodiazepine overdose, the same way naloxone is for opioids, or ethanol for methanol poisoning. It can potentially “reset” a benzodiazepine dependency when administered. But it can also just as often result in inducing a massive seizure leading to death when administered to an individual with a heavy benzo (or plain GABA-ergic) tolerance.
A coma would not absolve you and your body from the symptoms/effects of withdrawal, you just would not be able to “experience” them consciously. That brings with it it’s own dangers that would require a greater level of medical intervention than simply enduring those effects while conscious.
The hardest part of addiction is not the physical dependency it’s the psychological/emotional dependencies that keep us coming back.
To overcome the phychological/emotional aspects is to overcome baggage and to consciously choose to not partake in all the little rituals we create around our addictions. These rituals keep us in comfort bubble and become subconsciously programmed into our daily lives.
You have to choose to be aware of the issue and choose to replace these reinforcing rituals with something else.
This takes time, and consciousness;
awareness, discipline, growth.
Not sure if anyone mentioned the massive health issues that come from bed rest even in short term situations (bone density loss, muscle atrophy, cardiovascular complications, pressure wounds etc). There’s a reason they try and mobilize people in the ICU because being totally immobile in bed is TERRIBLE for you
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