How Does Morphine Affect Your Work Life
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Morphine is a strong opioid medicine that doctors sometimes prescribe for severe pain, and it is also a substance that can be misused outside medical care. Either way, its effects do not stay in the body alone. They reach into the working day, into study, into the small duties that keep a household running, and into the way other people at work see you. This article is about that wider damage: how morphine can change energy, thinking, mood, sleep, reliability and reputation at work, and why those changes often grow slowly enough that the person using it does not notice them until the cost is large. It is general information only, not individual medical advice. If morphine is affecting your work or your health, a qualified health professional is the right person to talk to.
The first thing to understand is that morphine works on the brain as well as on pain. It slows the central nervous system, which is the system that controls alertness, breathing, reaction time and the ability to think clearly. That slowing is part of why it can ease severe pain, but it is also why it can make a normal working day feel heavy. A person may feel drowsy soon after a dose, find it hard to stay awake in a meeting, or need to fight sleep on a bus, at a desk, or behind a machine. The drowsiness is not laziness. It is a direct effect of the drug on the brain, and it does not always pass with time. Some people build a little tolerance to the sleepiness, but many continue to feel tired, flat and slow for as long as they use morphine regularly.
That tiredness matters more at work than it does at home, because work asks for steady attention over many hours. A driver needs to watch the road without a break in focus. A nurse needs to remember a dose, a name and a time. A clerk needs to add numbers correctly and file papers in the right place. A teacher needs to follow a lesson and notice when a student is struggling. When morphine dulls alertness, all of those tasks become harder, and the mistakes that follow are not always small. A missed decimal, a forgotten instruction, a slow reaction near moving machinery, or a wrong entry in a record can cost money, lose a customer, or put someone in danger. The person may know they made a mistake only after a supervisor points it out, and by then the same mistake may have happened several times.
Thinking itself changes in a quieter way. Morphine can cloud memory and make it harder to hold several facts in mind at once, which is exactly what most jobs demand. You may start a task, get interrupted, and then struggle to remember where you left off. You may read the same paragraph three times and still not take it in. You may forget a meeting, a deadline, or a promise made to a colleague the day before. Over weeks, that forgetfulness looks like carelessness to the people around you, even when it is not. Colleagues begin to check your work more closely, managers begin to give you simpler tasks, and you begin to feel the quiet shame of being the person others no longer trust with important work.
Why Mornings Become the Hardest Part of the Day
For many people who use morphine regularly, the morning is when the damage shows first. Sleep on morphine is often shallow and broken, even when the person sleeps for many hours. The drug can disturb the normal rhythm of sleep, so the body never quite reaches the deep rest it needs. Waking up then feels like surfacing from mud: the head is heavy, the mouth is dry, the body aches, and the first thought is how to get through the next few hours. Getting out of bed late, missing the bus, arriving at work already exhausted — these small failures stack up until lateness becomes a pattern that a manager cannot ignore.
The morning is also when withdrawal can begin to bite, if the last dose was many hours ago. As the drug leaves the body, a person may feel restless, sweaty, nauseous, aching and anxious, and the only thing that seems to settle those feelings is another dose. That creates a cruel timetable: the day is organised around the next dose rather than around work. A shift may be cut short, a class may be missed, or a job may be left early, not because the person wants to leave, but because the body is demanding relief. Over time, the workplace learns the pattern before the person admits it, and trust starts to wear thin.
There is another morning problem that is rarely talked about, and that is the loss of routine. Work depends on small habits done without thinking: laying out clothes the night before, eating breakfast, checking a bag, leaving on time. Morphine use can slowly break those habits apart. A person may stay up late, sleep through an alarm, skip breakfast because nausea has taken away their appetite, and then rush out of the house in a panic. Each morning like that leaves less energy for the work itself, and the day starts in deficit. After months of mornings like that, even a person who once prided themselves on being punctual and prepared can become someone who is always catching up.
Concentration That Fades by Midday
Even when the morning goes well, the middle of the day often brings a second collapse. Morphine can make attention fade after a few hours, especially when the work is repetitive, detailed or boring. The mind drifts, the eyes grow heavy, and simple tasks take twice as long as they used to. A person may find themselves staring at a screen, a ledger or a workbench, unable to remember what they were supposed to do next. They may re-read an email, lose the thread of a conversation, or agree to something they did not fully hear. These are not signs of low intelligence. They are signs of a brain that is being slowed by a powerful drug.
The danger grows in jobs where a lapse in attention has real consequences. A machine operator who loses focus for a few seconds can injure a hand. A driver who nods off for a moment can cause a crash. A cook who forgets a stove is on can start a fire. A security guard who falls asleep on duty leaves a building unprotected. Workplaces have safety rules for exactly these reasons, and a person using morphine may break those rules without meaning to, simply because the drug makes sustained attention so hard. When an accident happens, the investigation rarely stops at the accident itself. It looks at the pattern behind it, and that pattern can end a career.
Study suffers in the same way, and for students the cost can be just as high. Learning needs memory, and memory needs a clear, rested mind. Morphine can make new information slip away almost as soon as it is heard, so revision feels useless and exams feel impossible. A student may sit in class, hear the teacher, and still have nothing to write down at the end of the hour. Over a term, the gap between that student and their classmates grows, not because they are less able, but because the drug is quietly blocking the very process of learning. Dropping out then feels like the only option, and the door to a better job closes with it.
Sick Days That Pile Up
One of the most visible effects of regular morphine use is the number of sick days. The drug can cause nausea, vomiting, constipation, headaches, sweating and a general feeling of being unwell, and those symptoms alone are enough to keep a person at home. On top of that, morphine lowers the body’s ability to fight infection in some people, and the poor sleep and poor appetite that often come with it leave the body weaker and slower to recover from ordinary illness. A cold that a colleague shakes off in two days may keep a morphine user in bed for a week.
The pattern of absence matters as much as the total number of days. One long illness is usually understood by an employer. Repeated short absences, a day here and two days there, with vague explanations, are much harder to explain. Managers begin to suspect the worst, colleagues begin to resent covering the missing work, and the person begins to dread the phone call to work in the morning. Some people start to lie about the reason for their absence, which adds guilt and fear to the tiredness. Others simply stop answering the phone, and the silence does more damage to their reputation than the absence itself.
There is also the hidden cost of working while unwell. Many people who use morphine do not take sick leave at all. They turn up, sit through the day in a fog, do half the work they should, and go home exhausted. This is sometimes called presenteeism, and it can be worse for a career than staying at home, because the poor work is visible while the reason for it is not. A supervisor sees the slow output and the errors, not the nausea and the broken sleep behind them. Over months, the record of poor performance builds up in appraisals and warnings, and the person may be passed over, demoted or dismissed without ever having explained what was really happening.
Tension With Managers and Colleagues
Work is a social place as well as a productive one, and morphine can damage the social side just as surely as the practical side. The drug can flatten mood, so a person who was once warm, funny and easy to talk to becomes quiet, withdrawn and hard to reach. Colleagues may think they have done something wrong, or that the person no longer likes them. Invitations to lunch are refused, jokes fall flat, and the small daily kindnesses that hold a team together begin to disappear. Loneliness grows inside a crowded workplace, and that loneliness can push a person further towards the drug, because it feels like the only reliable comfort left.
Irritability is the other side of the same change. As morphine wears off between doses, many people become short-tempered, impatient and quick to snap at small frustrations. A reasonable request from a manager can feel like an attack. A question from a colleague can feel like an accusation. Arguments that would once have been settled with a shrug can turn into shouting matches, formal complaints, or written warnings. The person may not even realise how much their tone has changed, because from the inside it feels like everyone else has become unreasonable. From the outside, it looks like a person who is becoming difficult to work with.
Managers are caught in the middle of this. Most managers are not doctors, and they cannot diagnose what is happening. What they see is lateness, absence, mistakes and conflict, and their job is to protect the team and the business. They may start with a quiet word, then a formal warning, then a performance plan. Each step is documented, and each step narrows the person’s options. By the time a manager suggests getting help, the relationship may already be damaged, and the person may hear the suggestion as a threat rather than as support. That is one of the saddest parts of this story: help is often offered only after trust has already been lost.
Income Becomes Unreliable
When work becomes unreliable, money follows. Missed shifts mean missed pay, especially for daily wage workers, drivers, labourers, shop assistants and anyone paid by the hour or by the job. A person who misses two days in a week may not have enough left for rent, food, or a child’s school costs. Overtime, which once topped up the household budget, disappears when a supervisor no longer trusts the person to stay to the end of a shift. Bonuses, tips and commissions fall away for the same reason. The household budget, which was already tight, begins to break.
The loss of income is made worse by the cost of the drug itself. Morphine bought outside medical care can be expensive, and the cost rises as tolerance grows, because the body needs more of the drug to feel the same effect. Money that should have gone to food, bills or children’s needs is spent on the next supply, and the family may not know why the money is gone. Debts build up quietly: a loan from a relative, a shop account left unpaid, a bill put off until next month. Each debt adds stress, and stress makes the craving for relief stronger, which makes the spending continue. It is a circle that is very hard to break from the inside.
For people in salaried work, the financial damage is slower but just as real. A missed promotion means years of lower pay. A demotion means an immediate cut. A dismissal means no pay at all, and a poor reference makes the next job harder to find. Some people move from one short job to another, each one ending the same way, until their work history looks like a list of failures. Employers who check references see the pattern and choose someone else. The person is then left with fewer options, lower pay, and less security, at exactly the time when they most need stability to recover.
The household feels the loss in ways that are hard to measure on a payslip. A partner who was counting on a steady wage begins to plan around uncertainty instead, cutting back on food, delaying a repair, or borrowing from family to cover the rent. Children notice the tension even when nobody explains it to them, and they may blame themselves for the arguments they hear at home. An older parent who was being supported may have to go without medicine or a visit to the doctor. The shame of not providing can weigh as heavily as the loss of money itself, and that shame can make a person withdraw further, avoiding the very family gatherings and conversations where support might be found. Money, in this story, is never just money. It is security, dignity, and the ability to plan for tomorrow, and morphine slowly takes all three away.
A Career That Stalls
Careers are built on small steps taken steadily over years: learning a skill, earning a certificate, taking on a harder task, being trusted with a team. Morphine can interrupt every one of those steps. Training courses are missed or failed because the person cannot concentrate or cannot attend regularly. Exams are sat in a fog and failed. A chance to learn a new machine, a new system or a new trade is given to someone else. The person stays in the same low-paid, insecure role while younger colleagues move past them, and the gap becomes harder to close with every year that passes.
The stall is not only about skills. It is also about confidence. A person who has been warned, passed over and doubted begins to doubt themselves. They stop applying for better jobs, stop volunteering for new work, and stop believing they could do more. They may tell themselves they are happy where they are, when the truth is they have given up hoping for more. That loss of ambition is one of the quietest harms of morphine, because it does not show up in a medical test or a payslip. It shows up in a life that gets smaller year by year, with fewer choices and fewer chances.
There is also the practical problem of a damaged record. Many workplaces keep formal records of warnings, absences and performance reviews, and those records follow a person when they apply for a new job. A reference that says a person was unreliable, or that they left under a cloud, can close doors that the person does not even know exist. In some trades, a failed drug test or a safety incident can end a licence or a certification, and without that licence the person cannot legally do the work they trained for. Rebuilding a career after that takes far longer than losing it did, and some people never manage it.
A Reputation That Suffers
Reputation at work is built slowly and lost quickly, and morphine can damage it in ways that are hard to repair. Colleagues notice the changes long before they know the cause: the smell, the pinpoint pupils, the nodding off, the slurred words, the mood swings, the excuses that do not quite add up. People talk, and gossip fills the gap left by silence. A person may be labelled lazy, dishonest or dangerous, and those labels stick even after the drug use stops. The unfairness of that is real, because the person is dealing with a powerful addiction, not a character flaw, but the workplace rarely waits for the full story.
The damage spreads beyond the workplace as well. A person who loses a job because of morphine may struggle to explain the gap in their work history to the next employer, to a landlord, or to a bank. Family members may hear about the problems at work and worry, argue, or withdraw. Friends may distance themselves. The person can end up isolated, with fewer people to turn to, at the very moment when support matters most. That isolation is dangerous, because it removes the everyday checks that keep a person grounded: a colleague who notices they are struggling, a friend who asks how they are, a family member who insists on help.
It is worth saying plainly that reputation can be rebuilt, but it takes time and it takes visible change. Turning up on time, every day, for months. Doing the work well and letting the work speak. Being honest, where it is safe to be honest, about what happened and what has changed. Those are slow repairs, and they do not happen in a week. But they do happen, and many people who have lost a good name at work have earned it back by steady, boring, reliable behaviour over a long period. The first step is stopping the damage, and the second step is giving people time to see the change.
The Safety Risks Nobody Plans For
Some jobs carry safety risks that make morphine use especially dangerous, and those risks are often the reason a person loses a job fastest. Driving, operating machinery, working at heights, handling chemicals, working with electricity, or caring for vulnerable people all demand full alertness and quick reactions. Morphine slows both. A moment of drowsiness at the wheel, a slow hand near a saw, or a missed step on a scaffold can cause an injury that changes a life in seconds. The injured person may be the user, or it may be a colleague, a customer, or a stranger on the road.
Employers have a legal duty to keep their workplaces safe, and many have drug testing policies for safety-critical roles. A failed test can mean immediate suspension or dismissal, even if no accident has happened. Some people try to hide their use, which adds the stress of being found out to the stress of the work itself. Others take risks they would never have taken before, telling themselves that one more shift will be fine, until the day it is not. The accident, when it comes, is rarely a surprise to the people who saw the warning signs. It is a surprise only to the person who believed they were still in control.
There is also the risk to others that comes from impaired judgement. A nurse who misreads a chart, a driver who misjudges a distance, a supervisor who approves unsafe work, or a parent who falls asleep while a child needs care — these are not stories about bad people. They are stories about a drug that dulls the brain’s ability to judge risk. The guilt after such an incident can be crushing, and it can push a person deeper into drug use as a way to escape the guilt. Breaking that cycle needs help from outside, not willpower alone, and the sooner that help is sought, the less damage is done.
My Take:
I want to start with something I believe strongly: a person whose work is falling apart because of morphine is not lazy, and they are not a bad worker. They are a person whose brain is being slowed by a powerful drug, and whose body is being pulled into a cycle of relief and craving that leaves very little energy for anything else. I have seen how quickly people judge a colleague who is late, forgetful or short-tempered, and how rarely they ask what is behind it. Judgement is easy. Understanding takes more effort, and it is the understanding that actually helps someone get better.
What troubles me most about morphine and work is how quiet the damage is at the start. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to ruin their career. It happens in small steps: one late arrival, one missed deadline, one sharp word to a colleague, one sick day that turns into three. Each step on its own looks like nothing much. Together, over months, they add up to a record that is hard to explain away. I think that is why early help matters so much. If a person, a family member or a manager notices the pattern early and speaks about it kindly, the damage can still be stopped before it becomes a dismissal or a lost licence.
I also think we need to be honest about how hard it is to work while using morphine regularly. The drug does not only make a person sleepy. It makes thinking slower, memory weaker, mood flatter and patience shorter, all at the same time. Expecting a person to do a full, careful day’s work in that state is like expecting someone to run a race with a heavy weight on their back. They may manage it for a while, out of pride or fear, but the weight does not go away, and sooner or later it slows them down. Blaming them for slowing down misses the point. The weight is the problem, and the weight needs to be lifted.
Money is the part of this that I think about a lot, because it is so concrete. A missed shift is not an abstract idea. It is food not bought, rent not paid, a child’s school fee left short. When I think about a daily wage worker who loses two days of pay in a week because morphine has left them too ill or too drowsy to work, I think about the whole household that feels that loss. The children eat less, the wife worries more, the landlord knocks louder. The drug does not only harm the person who takes it. It reaches into the kitchen, the school bag and the rent book, and it takes from all of them.
The part about reputation stays with me too, because reputation is so hard to rebuild once it is lost. A person can stop using morphine, get their health back, and still find that colleagues remember the lateness, the mistakes and the arguments long after the cause is gone. That feels unfair, and in many ways it is unfair, because people change and deserve a second chance. But I also understand why colleagues are cautious. They were let down, they covered extra work, they worried about safety, and trust takes time to grow back. I think the only honest answer is that rebuilding trust is slow, boring work: turning up on time, doing the job well, and doing it again the next day, and the day after that, until the new pattern is stronger than the old one.
I think managers have a harder job here than most people admit. A manager is not a doctor, and they cannot force a person to get help. What they can do is notice early, speak privately and kindly, and point towards help without threatening or shaming. That is not easy, especially when the team is under pressure and the work is suffering. But a manager who handles this well can save a career and possibly a life. A manager who handles it badly, with public humiliation or instant dismissal, may push a person further away from help. I would ask any manager reading this to remember that the person in front of them is probably already ashamed, and that kindness is more likely to open a door than anger is.
For students, my feeling is one of real sadness, because the loss is so large and so early. A student who drops out because morphine has made learning impossible loses not just a term, but a whole path: the qualification, the better job, the steadier income, the confidence that comes from finishing something hard. I would say to any young person in that position that it is not too late to go back, and that many people do go back, later, when they are healthier, and finish what they started. The gap in their education is not a verdict on their intelligence. It is a record of a time when a drug was in the way, and that time can end.
I want to say something about safety, because it is the part where sympathy has to sit alongside honesty. A person who drives, operates machinery or cares for others while impaired by morphine is putting other people at risk, and that risk cannot be ignored, however much we understand the addiction behind it. I do not say that to blame anyone. I say it because the safety of others is real, and because an accident caused by impairment can destroy two lives: the person harmed, and the person who caused the harm and must live with the guilt. If your work involves safety, stepping back from that work until you are clear-headed is not a failure. It is the responsible thing to do, and it is the kindest thing you can do for yourself as well.
What gives me hope is that work can also be part of recovery, not just part of the damage. A steady job gives a person a reason to get up, a place to be, people who expect them, and money that does not depend on the drug. I have seen people rebuild their working lives slowly, one reliable week at a time, and find that the routine of work helps them stay away from morphine, because the day is full and the mind is busy. Work is not a cure on its own, and nobody should be told to simply get a job and everything will be fine. But a good job, with understanding colleagues and a fair manager, can be a strong anchor while a person recovers.
If you are the person using morphine and your work is suffering, I would ask you to be honest with yourself about the link, even if it is painful. It is easy to blame the boss, the hours, the pay, or bad luck, and sometimes those things are genuinely part of the problem. But if the lateness, the mistakes, the sick days and the arguments all started or grew worse after morphine entered your life, then morphine is part of the problem too, and facing that is the first step towards fixing it. You do not have to fix it alone. A doctor, a support service, or a trusted person can help you make a plan, and that plan can include work: what to tell your employer, whether to take time off, and how to rebuild step by step.
If you are a family member watching this happen, I would say that nagging and shouting rarely help, even when they come from love and fear. What helps more is steady, calm honesty: naming what you have seen, saying how it affects the household, and offering to go with the person to get help. That is not easy, especially when money is short and patience is thin. But a person who feels judged will hide, and a person who feels supported is more likely to ask for help. You cannot force recovery, but you can keep the door open, and you can look after yourself and the children while you wait for the person to walk through it.
I also think about the people who work alongside someone using morphine, because they are affected too and their feelings are often ignored. A colleague who covers extra shifts week after week grows tired and resentful, not because they are unkind, but because they are exhausted. A supervisor who has to write warning after warning feels the strain of a process they did not choose. A team that loses a member to dismissal loses trust in the workplace itself, and wonders who will be next to leave. None of those people caused the problem, and none of them can solve it alone, but all of them pay a price for it. That is why a workplace that responds with clear support, fair procedures and a real offer of help is better for everyone than a workplace that simply punishes and moves on.
There is another angle that I think deserves more attention, and that is the way morphine changes how a person sees time. Work is built on time: deadlines, shifts, seasons, years of service, a pension at the end. Morphine narrows time to the next dose, the next few hours, the next relief. The future becomes blurry, and plans that once stretched over years shrink to plans that stretch over a day. A person stops saving, stops training, stops imagining a better job, because the future feels unreal compared with the craving in front of them. Recovery, in my view, is partly about widening time again: remembering that next month matters, that next year matters, that a career is built over decades and can be rebuilt over months. When a person starts to think in months again instead of hours, that is a sign that something important is healing.
I would also be honest about the limits of what work alone can do. A job can give structure, income and pride, but it cannot replace medical help, and it cannot cure an addiction on its own. I have heard people say that a person who is struggling just needs to work harder, as if effort alone could overcome a drug that changes the brain. That advice is not only unkind, it is wrong, because it asks a person to solve a medical problem with willpower, and then blames them when willpower is not enough. The right combination is medical support, honest conversation, and a workplace that is fair and patient while the person recovers. Any one of those on its own is weaker than all three together, and I think we should say that plainly instead of pretending that one simple answer exists.
For employers, I would add one practical thought. The cheapest and kindest moment to help is the earliest one, when the pattern is still small: a few late arrivals, a dip in quality, a change in mood. A quiet, private conversation at that stage, with a clear offer of support and a clear statement of what needs to change, can prevent a dismissal, an accident, or a lost career. Waiting until the record is full of warnings and the team is angry makes everything harder, for the employer as well as the employee. Early help is not softness. It is good management, because it protects the team, the business, and the person, all at the same time, and it costs far less than recruiting and training a replacement.
Finally, I would say this to anyone who is thinking about trying morphine outside medical care, or who has been offered it at work to get through a long shift or a painful day: do not start. The relief it offers is real, and that is exactly why it is dangerous. The relief lasts for hours, and the cost lasts for months and years, in missed pay, lost trust, stalled careers and damaged health. There are safer ways to deal with pain, tiredness and stress, and a doctor can help you find them. A job is hard enough without a drug that makes it harder. Keep your mornings clear, your mind sharp, and your reputation intact, and you will have something that morphine can never give you: a working life you can be proud of.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is sick days that pile up from Morphine dangerous?
Yes, it can be a serious warning sign. Frequent sick days linked to morphine often point to wider harm — nausea, poor sleep, infections that take longer to clear, or withdrawal between doses. The pattern matters as much as any single absence, because it usually means the body is struggling to cope. Anyone worried about repeated illness linked to morphine should speak to a qualified health professional promptly, rather than waiting for the pattern to get worse.
How soon can mistakes that cost money appear after using Morphine?
Mistakes can appear quickly, sometimes within days of regular use, because morphine slows thinking, attention and reaction time. At first the errors may be small — a wrong number, a forgotten message, a task done twice — but they tend to grow more frequent as use continues. Some people notice the change within the first week, while for others it builds up over several weeks. The timing varies, but the direction is usually the same: the longer and more regular the use, the more often mistakes appear.
Can Morphine really cause income that becomes unreliable?
Yes. When morphine causes lateness, sick days, slower work and mistakes, pay often falls — especially for people paid by the hour, by the day, or by the job. Salaried workers can lose overtime, bonuses and promotions, and in the worst cases they can lose the job itself. On top of that, money spent on morphine outside medical care leaves less for rent, food and family needs. The two losses together can make a household budget very hard to hold together.
What should I do if Morphine is causing a career that stalls?
The safest first step is to speak to a doctor or a local health service about the morphine use and about the work problems, so you can make a plan together. Support services can help with stopping and with recovery, and a health professional can advise on what, if anything, to tell an employer and whether time off would help. Do not try to fix this by working harder in the same fog — the drug is the obstacle, and getting help with it is what clears the way.
Does late arrivals and missed shifts from Morphine go away after stopping?
Often, yes, but not overnight. Sleep, alertness and concentration usually improve gradually over weeks after stopping, and as they improve, punctuality and attendance usually improve too. Some people find the first week or two hard, because withdrawal can disturb sleep and mood, but after that the mornings tend to get easier. Rebuilding a reputation takes longer than rebuilding sleep, because colleagues need time to see the new pattern. Steady attendance over months is what convinces people the change is real.
Who is most at risk of promotions that pass by from Morphine?
People who use morphine often or in larger amounts face the highest risk, and the risk is greater for anyone whose job needs sharp attention, quick reactions or heavy responsibility — drivers, machine operators, nurses, teachers and supervisors. Younger workers and students are also vulnerable, because a stalled start can shape a whole career. People with existing health problems, poor sleep, or who mix morphine with alcohol or other sedating substances face extra risk as well.
Sources
- National Institute on Drug Abuse — https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/opioids
- U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — https://www.dea.gov/drug-information
- Mayo Clinic, Drug addiction — https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/drug-addiction/symptoms-causes/syc-20365112
- World Health Organization, Substance abuse — https://www.who.int/health-topics/substance-abuse
- NHS, Drug addiction: getting help — https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/drug-addiction-getting-help/
This article is general information only. It is not medical advice. If you are worried about your health or about someone else, speak to a qualified health professional.