Psychotherapy
Motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioural therapy and relapse prevention, with contingency management where available, help people manage cravings and triggers and rebuild daily structure.
Condition
Opioid Use Disorder
Opioid use disorder is a treatable medical condition, and effective help exists.
Opioids include heroin (often called brown sugar), prescription painkillers and other strong pain medicines. Opioid use disorder develops when use becomes hard to control, with strong cravings and withdrawal, despite serious harm.
Opioids change the brain’s reward and stress systems deeply, which is why willpower alone is rarely enough and why relapse after detox is common. Overdose is a real risk, especially after a period of not using.
Long-term, medically supervised treatment combined with psychological and social support is highly effective. It reduces cravings, overdose risk and harm, and helps people rebuild stable lives.
Understand the person. Understand the problem. Find the right path forward.
How it may show up
What Opioid Use Disorder can look like
Everyone’s experience is different. You may recognise some of these, and not others.
Thoughts
- Strong, persistent cravings
- Much of the day spent thinking about getting or using
- Feeling unable to function without opioids
Emotions
- Anxiety, low mood or restlessness
- Shame or hopelessness
- Emotional numbness
Body
- Needing more for the same effect
- Withdrawal: aches, sweating, diarrhoea, yawning
- Constipation and drowsiness
- Small pupils or slowed breathing when using
Behaviour
- Using more than intended
- Seeking prescriptions from multiple doctors
- Financial, work or legal problems
- Withdrawing from family
Understanding the condition
Why opioids are so hard to stop
Opioids bring powerful relief from physical and emotional pain. The brain quickly adapts, so withdrawal becomes intensely uncomfortable and only more opioids seem to help. Treatment steadies this system so that people can focus on recovery.
- Trigger
- Craving
- Use
- Relief from withdrawal
- Consequences
- Repetition
…and the cycle repeats.
Assessment at Psymate
The right treatment begins with the right understanding.
- Presenting symptoms
- Severity
- Duration and course
- Functional impact
- Associated psychiatric symptoms
- Physical and neurological factors
- Sleep
- Substance use
- Previous treatment
- Family history where relevant
- Risk and safety
- Type, route, quantity and pattern of opioid use
- Withdrawal history and any past overdoses
- Injecting-related health risks, with blood-borne virus testing where relevant
- Chronic pain, mental health and use of other sedating substances
Start with a conversation
A clinician will take a careful history with you — and, where it helps, with people who know you well — to understand what is happening.
Psychiatry — the clinical core
Psychiatry means more than medication.
Your psychiatrist brings together diagnosis, clinical formulation, treatment selection, coordination of care, measurement and review.
PsychotherapyPharmacotherapyNeuromodulationLifestyle & Sleep InterventionsFamily CareRehabilitation
One person. One clinical plan. Multiple therapeutic modalities.
Treatment
How Opioid Use Disorder is treated
Treatment is planned around you. These are the core approaches your care may draw on.
Explore Psymate Therapy
Pharmacotherapy
Medication is often a central part of treatment. Long-term, supervised medication can relieve withdrawal, reduce cravings and lower the risk of overdose and relapse. Your psychiatrist individualises the plan, monitors it closely and reviews it with you over time.
Emerging evidence
Neuromodulation
TMS and other forms of brain stimulation are being studied for opioid craving, but they are not a standard treatment and do not replace medication and psychological care.
Additional care
Care shaped around this condition
Withdrawal Management
Medically supervised withdrawal with symptom relief, ideally as a step into ongoing treatment rather than on its own.
Overdose Prevention
Education for you and your family on overdose risk — particularly after a break in use — and what to do in an emergency.
Integrated care pathway
One connected path, from first conversation to lasting change.
- ASSESSA full picture of what you are experiencing
- UNDERSTANDA clear formulation, shared with you
- PERSONALISEA plan built around your goals
- TREATMedication-assisted treatment + Psychotherapy + Relapse prevention
- MEASUREProgress tracked, not assumed
- REFINECare adjusted as you change
What recovery can look like
Recovery is more than fewer symptoms.
Reduced cravings and stable daily life
Lower risk of overdose
Improved physical health
Return to work or study
Rebuilt family relationships
With ongoing treatment, many people with opioid use disorder achieve lasting stability and rebuild the lives they want.
When to seek help
Consider an assessment when:
- You use opioids more often or in larger amounts than planned
- You feel unwell when you can’t get opioids
- You are using painkillers in ways not prescribed
- Symptoms are persistent or keep coming back
- They are causing you significant distress
- They are affecting relationships, work or education
- They are interfering with daily functioning
- They are becoming difficult to control
Urgent help
- Signs of overdose — unresponsiveness, very slow or noisy breathing, blue lips — call emergency services immediately
- Using again after detox, prison or hospital, when tolerance is lower and overdose risk is high
- Immediate risk of suicide
- Serious risk of self-harm
- Severe behavioural disturbance
- Being unable to keep yourself or others safe
- An acute medical or psychiatric emergency
The Psymate promise
What you can expect from us
- You will be heard.
- Your symptoms will be understood in context.
- Your treatment will be planned, not simply prescribed.
- Your progress will be measured.
- Your care will evolve with you.
You are a person before you are a diagnosis.
Begin Care
You don’t need to know what treatment you need before seeking help.
That is what assessment is for.
PSYMATE
Passion for healing meets the power of technology.
Science-led. Human-centred. Connected across the journey.