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What Is Naltrexone Used to Treat?
But if you think you’re having a medical emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number. Like most drugs, Vivitrol may cause mild or serious side effects. The lists below describe some of the more common side effects. For more information, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist. Avoid drinking alcohol or taking illegal or recreational drugs while taking Vivitrol.
Vivitrol vs. naltrexone
After a Vivitrol injection, you may have pain, swelling, bruising, or redness where the medication was injected. Other long-term side effects may occur from using Vivitrol, but more long-term studies are needed. If you have questions about any long-term side effects of taking Vivitrol, including liver problems, talk with your doctor. Serious side effects from Vivitrol aren’t common, but they can occur. Call your doctor right away if you have serious side effects. Call 911 or get emergency medical help right away in all cases of known or suspected opioid overdose, even if naloxone is administered.
Drug information
You’ll receive Vivitrol as an injection into a muscle of your buttock by a healthcare professional. Typically, it’s given once every 4 weeks, or once each month. Vivitrol and naltrexone are both prescribed for treating opioid and alcohol dependence. Methadone can be used as a pain reliever how to stop alcohol cravings in some people who don’t respond to certain other pain medications.
Serious side effects
Opioid withdrawal with naltrexone can be serious and may require hospitalization. It can take about 22 hours for naltrexone to leave your system entirely. However, naltrexone also gets metabolized by the liver to become 6-ß-naltrexol, an active metabolite that can have the same effect as naltrexone. This can prolong some of the effects of naltrexone for up to 70 hours. However, it’s still recommended to take this medication daily to yield the best health outcomes.
To be effective, treatment with Vivitrol must be used with other alcohol or drug recovery programs such as counseling. Vivitrol is an opioid antagonist that works by stopping cravings for opioids or alcohol in the brain. Vivitrol has the highest affinity for the mu opioid receptor and has little to no activity as an opioid agonist. If you have any questions about Vivitrol or naloxone, or how to treat an opioid overdose, talk with your doctor. However, naltrexone (the active drug in Vivitrol) can be used with another medication called bupropion for weight loss. Therefore, naltrexone may control other cravings for food as well.
- They can review the pros and cons of using this medication for your condition.
- Or they may decide that a treatment other than Vivitrol would be better for you.
- Naltrexone does not treat withdrawal symptoms; rather, it is designed to suppress cravings for alcohol or opiate drugs.
- The 24-week time frame was the average time that people in the trial continued taking the medication being studied.
- Combining Naltrexone and alcohol can present certain issues, and experts claim that the use of Naltrexone ought to be used in tandem with abstinence.
Your doctor will perform an evaluation of your health and needs to determine if a monthly naltrexone injection is right for you. You should not receive monthly naltrexone injections or take other naltrexone-containing medications if you are actively using opioids. Research has found that a once-a-month naltrexone shot is effective in reducing alcohol use.
- If you have belly pain, yellowing of the skin or eyes, or dark urine, tell your doctor right away.
- Opioid dependence is possible with typical use of opioid medications, even when they’re prescribed by a doctor and taken as directed.
- Do not drive or perform any kind of hazardous tasks if naltrexone causes you any dizziness or other dangerous side effects.
- You may have questions about Vivitrol and your treatment plan.
This includes loss of coordination and a slower response time. Sometimes the first sign of a liver problem is a higher level of liver enzymes (a type of protein). In clinical studies, these levels were often increased for only a short period of time, and they didn’t cause any side effects. However, some people did develop hepatitis or liver disease after taking Vivitrol. There isn’t any data from clinical trials on how many people taking Vivitrol developed hepatitis or liver disease.
