Conditions We Treat
Stimulant addiction treatment in Colorado, whichever stimulant it is.
Cocaine, prescription stimulants taken outside a prescription, and amphetamines all work on the same system and wear the same grooves. We treat stimulant use at six Colorado offices and online, at the level of structure the first months actually need.
Understanding Stimulants
Uppers is a very wide word.
Stimulants are a broad class of drugs commonly called uppers. The category runs from the caffeine in a cup of coffee, through medications a doctor prescribes, to illicit substances like cocaine and methamphetamine. What they share is the reason for the classification: each one has a stimulating effect on the body's central nervous system.
What they do not share is a risk profile. Each drug in the class presents its own potential for misuse, its own side effects, and its own way of going wrong. The National Institute on Drug Abuse describes cocaine as an addictive stimulant drug whose cardiac effects can be fatal even on a first use, while the prescription stimulants used for ADHD are legitimate and effective medicines when they are taken as prescribed and monitored. Same class, very different conversations.
Which is why "am I using stimulants" is rarely the useful question. The useful ones are narrower: which stimulant, how much of the week it takes up now, and what it is costing you to keep it there.
If you or someone you know in or near Colorado is struggling with stimulant, meth, or cocaine addiction, call The Redpoint Center today to speak to someone who can help.
Signs and Symptoms
What stimulant use tends to look like.
These hold across most of the class, because they follow from what a stimulant does to the central nervous system. Someone struggling may show only a few of them, and the early ones read as a good week rather than a problem.
Exhilaration and overconfidence
A feeling of exhilaration and excess confidence, usually with plans and promises to match it.
Alertness that will not settle
Increased alertness and energy that tips over into restlessness and an inability to sit still.
Agitation or aggression
Aggression or increased agitation, sometimes over things that would not normally land at all.
Dilated pupils
Widened pupils, often noticeable in ordinary daylight where they would usually be small.
Confusion and delusions
Confusion or a disconnect from reality, including firmly held beliefs that do not track.
Anxiety and paranoia
Anxious thoughts or paranoia, most often late in a run or as the drug is wearing off.
Heart rate and blood pressure
Changes in heart rate, along with increased perspiration and raised blood pressure.
Visible weight loss
Visible signs of weight loss, usually faster than anything else in their life explains.
Nasal damage
Nasal congestion and damage, if the stimulant is being snorted rather than taken another way.
Sleep that stops making sense
Insomnia or abnormal sleep patterns, including nights that simply do not happen.
Extreme mood swings
Warmth and irritability trading places quickly, sometimes inside a single conversation.
The comedown afterward
NIDA lists fatigue, depression, and disturbed sleep patterns among the symptoms of stopping.
The Class Up Close
Three stimulants, three different conversations.
Most of what we see falls into three groups. They overlap in how they act on the body and diverge in nearly everything else: how people arrive at them, what the risks are, and what a treatment plan has to account for.
Prescribed, then misused
Prescription stimulants
The ADHD and narcolepsy medicines, dextroamphetamine and methylphenidate among them. Legitimate and effective as prescribed. Misuse means a dose or a route the prescription does not cover, or a bottle that belongs to somebody else.
Powder and crack
Cocaine
A short, expensive high that is over in minutes and asks for another. The cardiac risk is immediate rather than cumulative, and what it is being cut with has become the other half of the problem.
What This Class Costs
The danger is cardiovascular first and psychiatric second.
Stimulant use is usually discussed in terms of dependence. The more immediate risk, right across the class, is what these drugs ask of a heart and a blood pressure that were not built for it.
NIDA is direct about cocaine. Chest pain that feels like a heart attack is common and sends many people who use cocaine to the emergency department, and the drug raises the risk of heart attack, seizure, and stroke, any of which can be fatal even the first time. Mixing cocaine with alcohol produces cocaethylene, which NIDA notes may increase the toxic effects, and that combination is common precisely because one drug is so often used to smooth the other.
Prescription stimulants carry their own version of this. NIDA's account of the drug classes people misuse notes that high doses may result in dangerously high body temperature and an irregular heartbeat, that repeated misuse can lead to feelings of hostility or paranoia or even psychosis, and that it is possible for people to become dependent on or addicted to them. It also names what most people notice first on stopping: fatigue, depression, and disturbed sleep patterns.
Then there is what is actually in the supply. NIDA describes the adulteration of cocaine with highly potent fentanyl as a major contributor to rising overdose deaths, and a tolerance built on stimulants offers no protection against an opioid. Naloxone, sold over the counter as Narcan, reverses an opioid overdose and does no harm if opioids turn out not to be involved. Keeping it within reach and not using alone are worth doing today, whatever you decide about treatment.
None of this is meant as a reason to be frightened into calling. It is a reason not to wait for a tidier moment to.
How We Treat It
No prescription fixes this one, so the program is the treatment.
There is no medication approved to treat stimulant use disorder, for cocaine or for anything else in the class. That is a real difference from alcohol or opioid care, and it is worth knowing before you start comparing programs, because it means behavioral treatment is the treatment rather than a supplement to one.
What the evidence supports is structure and repetition. SAMHSA's guidance on treating stimulant use disorders and its longer TIP 33 volume put contingency management first, as the approach with the strongest evidence behind it, and describe cognitive behavioral therapy as most useful in combination with it. Both depend on the unglamorous work of staying engaged long enough for the work to hold. An intensive outpatient week is largely made of exactly that.
Your plan at The Redpoint Center is built from the approaches our clinicians actually practice: individual and group therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, EMDR where trauma is part of the picture, motivational interviewing, experiential work, and family therapy. Medication still has a role, just not for the stimulant itself. If depression, anxiety, trauma, or another substance is part of what is going on, that gets treated as part of the same plan and our medical team manages that side of it.
- A structured weekly schedule
- Individual and group therapy
- Co-occurring mental health care
- Family involvement
- Relapse prevention planning
Levels of Care
How much structure to start with.
Stimulant recovery leans hard on routine, so most people begin with more structure than they expected and step down as things steady. An assessment sets the level, not a judgment about how bad it has to get before you are allowed to ask.
Clinical Approaches
What each therapy is doing here.
Motivational interviewing for the unsure
Being of two minds about stopping is the ordinary starting point, not a disqualification. This works with that rather than debating you out of it.
Find out what your plan covers before you decide anything.
We run your benefits and then tell you plainly what is covered, what is not, and what the gap looks like. It is free, it takes a few minutes, and it beats guessing at a number.
Accepted insurance
Employer and EAP partners
Don’t see your plan? Call us and we will check it, including out-of-network benefits.
What Else We Treat
Most people are dealing with more than one thing.
Common Questions
Stimulant treatment questions, answered.
What actually counts as a stimulant?
Do I need a different program for cocaine than for prescription stimulants?
Is there a medication for stimulant addiction?
I have a prescription for my stimulant. Can it still be a problem?
What does coming off stimulants feel like?
How dangerous is cocaine to the heart?
Does insurance cover stimulant addiction treatment in Colorado?
Start with which stimulant, and go from there.
You do not need a diagnosis or a plan before you get in touch, and you do not have to have stopped first. Send us a note or call (303) 219-0973, and we will work out what is actually going on and what would help.