What is drug detox in Katowice?
Drug detox at our clinic is an intravenous infusion lasting 3, 6 or 12 hours, preceded by an interview and an examination. The job of the drip is to bring down withdrawal symptoms: anxiety, tremor, nausea, insomnia, dehydration, disturbed electrolytes. The patient sleeps, receives fluids and symptomatic medication, and staff monitor the vital signs.
It has to be said plainly what the drip does not do. It does not remove the drug from the body faster than the liver and kidneys will, because the pace of elimination is governed by the half-life of the substance, not by the volume of fluid given. It is not an antidote. Nor is it treatment for addiction. It is the first day, after which the real work begins: addiction therapy in Katowice and, more broadly, drug addiction treatment in Katowice.
That difference matters in practice. Someone who arrives for an infusion convinced they will walk out detoxified and free of the addiction will walk out disappointed. Someone who arrives to sleep through the worst hours with medical staff nearby will get exactly that.
Why is a place hard to find in Katowice from one day to the next?
The report of the Board of the Silesian Voivodeship on the implementation of the addiction prevention programme, adopted in March 2025, describes a system working at the edge of its capacity. Seven residential rehabilitation centres for people addicted to psychoactive substances operate across the voivodeship. Together they have 225 beds, and in 2023 the average use of a single bed came to 330 days a year. A bed is practically never empty.
A second figure from the same report shows where the queue comes from. Outpatient clinics treating disorders caused by psychoactive substances in the Silesian Voivodeship saw 5,559 people in 2021, 6,545 in 2022 and 7,332 in 2023. That is a rise of almost a third in two years, against resources that did not grow in the same period.
Hence the calls we take in Katowice. Someone stopped three days ago, has nowhere to go today and is looking for anything available now. A private infusion is not an answer to a system under strain and we do not pretend it is. It is an answer to one specific thing: getting through the hardest hours instead of going through withdrawal alone at home.
What we establish before the infusion and what rules the procedure out
The interview before the infusion is not a formality. We ask about the substance and the dose, about when the last one was taken, about alcohol and medication taken alongside it, about earlier seizures, about heart, liver and kidney disease, about psychiatric treatment, and about whether there is a sober person who will collect the patient and stay with them overnight. We measure blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation, and assess the level of consciousness.
Some answers end the qualification, and we say so openly before anyone pays:
- addiction to opioids, including heroin and counterfeit painkiller tablets,
- addiction to benzodiazepines, GHB or GBL,
- pregnancy,
- seizures, delirium or confusion during this withdrawal episode,
- suicidal thoughts,
- severe circulatory or respiratory failure.
Pregnancy deserves a sentence of its own. In opioid addiction, withdrawal itself endangers the foetus, and the standard of care is substitution treatment run by a specialist centre, not a one-off drip. We refer a pregnant woman to that kind of care and do not give an outpatient infusion.
When is calling the clinic the wrong first move?
There are states in which waiting for a free appointment at the clinic is a worse idea than going where there is a ward, monitoring and a doctor on duty around the clock. These include:
- seizures that have already occurred during this withdrawal,
- confusion, disorientation as to place and time, hallucinations,
- high fever, muscle rigidity, a very fast pulse,
- disturbed consciousness after stopping benzodiazepines or GHB,
- withdrawal combined with alcohol in someone who has had delirium before,
- suicidal thoughts or a suicide attempt in recent days.
In that situation the task for the family is not to find a drip, but to get the patient into hospital care. We can help over the phone to judge whether this is such a case. What we will not do is take on an infusion in a clinic that has no conditions for looking after such a patient overnight.
This is the one part of this page worth reading before calling rather than after.
The substance, not how you feel, decides what is safe
The common question is how badly someone is taking it, while the deciding question is what they took. Withdrawal from different classes of substance runs a different course and carries different risk, and the difference is large enough that the same drip can be sensible in one case and dangerous in another.
- Stimulants, meaning amphetamine, cocaine, mephedrone: exhaustion, long sleep, low mood, irritability, dehydration. There is no recognised pharmacotherapy for this withdrawal, so we treat the symptoms. This is the real ground for an infusion.
- Benzodiazepines: symptoms appear with a delay, usually after two to seven days, and can drag on for weeks. They are safely stopped by gradually reducing the dose under supervision, not in a single procedure.
- GHB and GBL: the course can match severe alcohol withdrawal, and standard sedative treatment often turns out to be insufficient. Such a patient is managed in hospital conditions.
- Opioids: a separate matter, described below.
- Cannabis and hashish: the complaints concern mainly sleep, appetite and irritability, and an intravenous infusion is not needed here.
- Legal highs and new psychoactive substances: nothing can be predicted here, because the trade name says nothing about the contents, and the same bag bought twice can contain two different substances.
What a 3, 6 and 12 hour infusion looks like at the clinic on Józefowska
After qualification we insert a cannula and connect the infusion. Staff are present throughout and monitor blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation. You can sleep, and most people do exactly that.
The three options differ less in strength than in the time over which hydration can be maintained and symptomatic medication given. The three hour option works for a mild comedown in someone generally healthy. Six hours leaves room for sleep and for repeating medication. We choose twelve hours after a binge, with heavy dehydration and with clearly disturbed vital signs.
After an amphetamine binge: what the infusion actually gives
This is the most common reason people call us. After a few days of an amphetamine or mephedrone binge the body is dehydrated, sleep deprived and out of balance, and mood drops so low that the drop itself pushes towards another dose. The infusion does not shorten the action of the drug and does not cancel the addiction. What it does give is a day of sleep, balanced fluids and electrolytes and relief of symptoms, which are the conditions in which it is easier not to reach for it again.
After the procedure the patient goes home. That day they do not drive and do not go back to work, because symptomatic medication lengthens reaction time.
The same infusion with a home visit, at your address
We also give the same procedure with a home visit, administering the drip at the patient's address, when the patient qualifies for an outpatient detox but reaching Józefowska is a genuine problem, for instance with extreme weakness after a comedown or no transport. The qualification criteria and the list of exclusions stay identical then, and a broader range of procedure lengths is available: 1, 2, 3, 6 or 12 hours, which the medical staff matches to the patient's condition. A home visit does not widen the indications: opioids, benzodiazepines, GHB and GBL, seizures, delirium, pregnancy or the absence of a sober companion rule this option out just as they do in the clinic. It is a separate item on the price list, different from the in-clinic rate, and we confirm its price and availability at registration or by phone.
What the staff give in the drip and why the composition varies
We have no ready-made mixture for drugs. The composition is set by medical staff after qualification, based on the substance, the time since the last dose, the state of hydration and any accompanying illnesses. The core is usually similar:
- rehydration fluids as the base of the infusion,
- electrolytes, above all magnesium, potassium and sodium,
- glucose, if indicated,
- B group vitamins, including thiamine,
- symptomatic medication: anti-anxiety, sleep-inducing, anti-emetic and painkilling, selected one by one.
Two things are not in this infusion. There is no substance that neutralises a drug, because none exists. Nor is this a vitamin drip from the regenerative offer, even though some ingredients overlap. The aim is different: to take the patient through withdrawal symptoms, not to improve wellbeing after a hard week.
Heroin and opioid tablets: why we say no
We do not run detox for people addicted to heroin or other opioids. It is a deliberate decision and it is worth knowing the reason, because it sounds counterintuitive.
Opioid withdrawal itself rarely threatens life. What is dangerous is what happens afterwards. Tolerance falls within a few days, and a return to the dose used before the break can kill. Cohort studies described by Strang in the BMJ in 2003 and by Merrall in Addiction in 2010 indicate that in the first weeks after detox the risk of fatal overdose rises several times over, of the order of three to eight times, most of all in the first two weeks. A one day drip creates exactly that state and gives nothing that would protect against it.
The honest answer is substitution treatment run by a facility with the appropriate contract. Two such outpatient programmes operate in the Silesian Voivodeship, none of them located in Katowice, and there are 25 in the whole country. The queue can be real, but this is still the right path, not an infusion.
On top of that comes a risk that is discussed too little in Poland. Counterfeit painkiller tablets sold as oxycodone are found to contain nitazenes, opioids that can be stronger than fentanyl. The buyer does not know their own dose. People in this group should talk to a doctor about naloxone spray, which in Poland is a prescription medicine.
One day under supervision versus round the clock care
An outpatient infusion covers one day. If withdrawal symptoms are going to build up over a week or longer, one day under supervision will solve nothing, however well it is conducted. This concerns above all benzodiazepines, GHB and situations in which drugs are taken together with alcohol.
Round the clock care is then needed, followed by a therapeutic stay: our page on the addiction treatment centre in Katowice describes what that path looks like. We will say this during the phone call, before anyone travels to Józefowska.
If, on the other hand, it is a comedown from stimulants in someone without serious illness and with a sober person at home, an infusion at the clinic is a sensible choice and settles the matter in one day. The phone number 880 808 880 works daily from 8:00 to 20:00, and after a few questions we know which group a given situation belongs to.
