Stimulant and meth addiction, and where to start with it.

Stimulants, otherwise known as uppers, invigorate the body's central nervous system. They create a forced sense of energy, keep a person awake, or make them feel hyper-focused. That effect is the whole basis of the category, and the category is a wide one.

Caffeine is technically a stimulant. The ones that bring people here are far more potent. Common study aids and ADHD medications, Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta among them, are stimulant drugs often used illicitly: the National Institute on Drug Abuse describes prescription stimulants such as dextroamphetamine and methylphenidate as medicines for ADHD and narcolepsy that raise blood pressure and heart rate and constrict blood vessels. The rest of the class is amphetamines, cocaine, and methamphetamine.

They come in various forms, presenting as powder or pills, with meth also produced illicitly in a rock, glass-like form. Whatever the form, there is no safe way to engage with stimulants, and even a prescribed one requires active, dedicated monitoring and management.

So the useful question is rarely "are stimulants involved." It is which one, how much of the week it takes up now, and how long it has been that way. Those answers change what treatment has to cover, and they change which of the two pages below is worth your time.

Redpoint customizes your treatment plan around your own needs and goals at any stage of recovery. Our clinical approach and medical model, backed by trained clinicians, let us personalize your time with us and provide medical support wherever it is needed, so the plan treats the whole person rather than the substance alone.

In practice that means cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, individual and group work, dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, EMDR where trauma is part of the picture, experiential work, and family therapy. SAMHSA's guidance on treating stimulant use disorders puts behavioral treatment at the center for this class, because no medication is approved to treat stimulant use disorder itself. Medication still matters for what sits alongside it, and our medical team manages that side of the plan.

Stimulant use, a mental health condition, or the two together in co-occurring disorders can all be one plan rather than a string of referrals. Care runs at the partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and outpatient levels and virtually, at our six Colorado offices in Fort Collins, Boulder, Longmont, Greeley, Thornton, and Glenwood Springs.