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There is a broad range of treatment options for heroin addiction, including medications as well as behavioral therapies. Science has taught us that when medication treatment is integrated with other supportive services, patients are often able to stop heroin (or other opiate) use and return to more stable and productive lives.

In November 1997, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened a Consensus Panel on Effective Medical Treatment of Heroin Addiction. The panel of national experts concluded that opiate drug addictions are diseases of the brain and medical disorders that indeed can be treated effectively. The panel strongly recommended (1) broader access to methadone maintenance treatment programs for people who are addicted to heroin or other opiate drugs; and (2) the Federal and State regulations and other barriers impeding this access be eliminated. This panel also stressed the importance of providing substance abuse counseling, psychosocial therapies, and other supportive services to enhance retention and successful outcomes in methadone maintenance treatment programs. The panel’s full consensus statement is available by visiting the NIH Consensus Development Program Web site at consensus.nih.gov.

Methadone, a synthetic opiate medication that blocks the effects of heroin for about 24 hours, has a proven record of success when prescribed at a high enough dosage level for people addicted to heroin. Other approved medications are naloxone, which is used to treat cases of overdose, and naltrexone, both of which block the effects of morphine, heroin, and other opiates.

Buprenorphine is the most recent addition to the array of medications available for treating addiction to heroin and other opiates. This medication is different from methadone in that it offers less risk of addiction and can be dispensed in the privacy of a doctor’s office. Several other medications for use in heroin treatment programs are also under study.

For the pregnant heroin abuser, methadone maintenance combined with prenatal care and a comprehensive drug treatment program can improve many of the detrimental maternal and neonatal outcomes associated with untreated heroin abuse. There is preliminary evidence that buprenorphine also is safe and effective in treating heroin dependence during pregnancy, although infants exposed to methadone or buprenorphine during pregnancy typically require treatment for withdrawal symptoms. For women who do not want or are not able to receive pharmacotherapy for their heroin addiction, detoxification from opiates during pregnancy can be accomplished with relative safety, although the likelihood of relapse to heroin use should be considered.

There are many effective behavioral treatments available for heroin addiction. These can include residential and outpatient approaches. Several new behavioral therapies are showing particular promise for heroin addiction. Contingency management therapy uses a voucher-based system, where patients earn "points" based on negative drug tests, which they can exchange for items that encourage healthful living. Cognitive-behavioral interventions are designed to help modify the patient’s thinking, expectancies, and behaviors and to increase skills in coping with various life stressors.

Meditation can be a powerful tool in relapse prevention and can become what one therapist called a “positive addiction” that provides a healthy alternative to addictive behaviors. People also report that meditation leads to new insights about the source of their cravings and helps to dissolve them.

In their book, Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction, Drs. Bein and Bien offer ten “doorways” to recovery, from journaling to meditation, and they present dozens of specific meditation exercises based on their experience as therapists and meditators. Their book says: “People use addictive behaviors to avoid facing what hurts them. The Buddhist mindfulness practice offers a gentle way to begin facing pain and working with it to establish a new relationship to life. Mindfulness helps in two ways: first, by becoming aware of yourself and your environment, you understand what hurts you, what ‘triggers’ you, and second, by befriending your triggers, you can disarm them. Mindfulness provides a larger purpose, a broader context in which to see a problem. And then things fall into place more gently. If you are awake and relaxed and enjoying your life, there is less need and desire for your addictions.”

Kevin Griffin writes about Buddhism and the Twelve Steps saying this: “Buddha said that the cause of suffering is desire, and the Twelve Steps try to heal people from desire gone mad: addiction. Both systems ask you to look at the painful realities of life, to understand them, and to use this understanding as the foundation for developing peace, wisdom, faith, and compassion. The practical aspects of Buddhism is one of its main corollaries to the Steps.” His book, One Breath at a Time, is an exploration of how the two systems can work together, and he offers meditation techniques based on Vipassana and Metta practices.

“Zen is the ultimate and original recovery program,” says author Mel Ash in his book, The Zen of Recovery. “It exposes our denial of true self and shows us how all our other diseases and discontentments flow from our fundamental denial of unity with each other and the universe.”

Sogyal Rinpoche writes: “All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn’t Christ also say: ”Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth”? And yet asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant, sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes because we are lazy, sometimes our minds are so busy with questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of asking does not occur to us. The turning point in any healing of alcoholics or drug addicts is when they admit their illness and ask for aid. In one way or another, we are all addicts of samsara; the moment when help can come for us is when we admit our addiction and simply ask.”

Lindsay Lohan has checked into rehab, she said in a statement Wednesday. "I have made a proactive decision to take care of my personal health," she said. "I appreciate your well wishes and ask that you please respect my privacy at this time." A source close to the actress tells PEOPLE: "Lindsay is in a very positive frame of mind and is looking forward to making a positive change in her life."

Lohan, 20, has been filming the thriller I Know Who Killed Me, and a rep for the movie tells PEOPLE production had already been on hold due to Lohan’s recent appendix surgery. It’s uncertain when filming will resume. "I Know Who Killed Me, like all films, has insurance," says the rep. "In Lindsay’s case, she has a good 13-hour work day. The character she plays requires a good deal of physicality and she’s not yet healed (from her surgery) and not yet ready to return." In December, Lohan’s rep told PEOPLE the actress was attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Later that month, Lohan revealed that she had been in AA for a year, and said she feels better when she’s not drinking. "I was going out too much and I knew that, and I have more to live for than that," she told PEOPLE. But Lohan had previously dismissed critics who said she was going out too much. In November, she told Oprah Winfrey that she is not a party girl, adding, "Is it a crime to go dancing with your friends?" Over the summer, James G. Robinson, CEO of Morgan Creek Productions, blasted her for being absent from the set of her movie Georgia Rule and blamed her "heavy partying" for the behavior. Lohan’s mother Dina quickly shot back, saying Robinson was "way out of line." Lohan was briefly hospitalized at the time for being "overheated and dehydrated," according to her rep.

Britney Spears is seeking a less toxic lifestyle. Spears voluntarily checked herself into rehab on Monday, her manager, Larry Rudolph, confirmed to E! News. "We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of her family and friends at this time," Rudolph said. Despite Rudolph’s request, the paparazzi rapidly tracked Spears down at Malibu’s Promises treatment center, and photos of the rehabbing star taking a smoking break surfaced on the Internet Tuesday afternoon.

While he declined to offers specifics on Spears’ treatment, Rudolph told E! News‘ Ryan Seacrest exclusively that the 25-year-old singer was "doing great." He said that Spears was determined to make recovery her top priority, and that all she wanted was time to rest and get better. Spears’ decision to seek help comes after she briefly checked into a treatment facility in Antigua last week, but departed less than 24 hours later. On Friday, she returned to Los Angeles, where she took the drastic step of shaving her head and acquiring some new tattoos, before hitting the club circuit in a short, blond wig and sunglasses.

The self-inflicted makeunder capped off months of bizarre behavior from the former pop princess, who admitted in a posting to her Website last month that her recent actions had been "far from perfect." Spears kicked off her hard-partying regimen shortly after filing for divorce from Kevin Federline in November, an occasion she celebrated by hitting the town without her panties…repeatedly. In December, she celebrated New Year’s Eve by either nodding off (per Rudolph) or collapsing into a "dead faint" (per the New York Post) while on the clock as the host of a Las Vegas bash.

Even those closest to Spears were reportedly powerless to convince the fallen pop star to clean up her act. In an email to Hollywood.com’s That Other Blog last week, Spears’ former personal assistant Felicia Culotta wrote that she was "crushed/saddened/heart sick" about the singer’s downward spiral. "WE (as in her Family and nearest and dearest—ALL of whom are NOT on the payroll anymore!!) are doing EVERYTHING in our power to get help for Britney and all in our power to NOT pad the bottom or move the bottom, so when she does indeed hit rock bottom, she’ll stand up and walk away from this whole fiasco a new, confident, changed, career driven Britney like we all knew and loved," Culotta wrote. Just days later, that rock bottom moment came to pass, as the newly bald Spears finally accepted she needed professional help.

Brad Renfro, the former child star whose later career was hampered by drug and alcohol problems, has been found dead at his Los Angeles home. He was 25.According to reports, Renfro’s body was discovered at 9am yesterday. The cause of death has yet to be determined, although the actor is believed to have been out drinking with friends the night before his death. "He was working hard on his sobriety," Renfro’s lawyer Richard Kaplan said yesterday. "He was doing well. He was a nice person."

Raised by his grandmother in Knoxville, Tennessee, Renfro was plucked from obscurity at the age of 12 to star alongside Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones in the 1994 blockbuster The Client, based on the bestseller by John Grisham. The following year he won the Hollywood Reporter’s "young star" award. Renfro went on to enjoy a fitfully successful acting career with a starring role in Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil and supporting turns in the likes of Sleepers, Bully and Ghost World. He recently completed work on the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers, in which he stars alongside Winona Ryder and Tommy Lee Jones. But Renfro’s career was often overshadowed by his off-screen trials. In May 2006 he served 10 days in jail after attempting to buy heroin from an undercover police officer in LA’s Skid Row area. More recently, Renfro claimed he was making efforts to stay clean. "I’m tired of paying the consequences," he said.

An evaluation of alcoholism treatment suggests more ways to define success than strictly total abstinence. The method may help provide some changes to traditional approaches, the results of a case study suggest. "It may be argued that subjects who remain abstinent [from alcohol] during treatment are the most successful because psychosocial functioning and physical health depend on sobriety," say study authors Sue-Jane Wang, Ph.D., and Celia Winchell, M.D., and colleagues from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, Md. "However, other patterns of drinking are very common during treatment and many analytic approaches fail to make a distinction among the patterns." "For example, traditional research methods often don’t distinguish between a person who drinks only once a week during a 12-week trial and one who abstains for the first 10 weeks but spends the last two weeks intoxicated, according to the study.

These summary measures fail to capture the full complexity of the drinking pattern over time," the researchers say. The authors said, "There has been a great deal of contention on whether the effects of alcoholism treatment should be evaluated solely against the criterion of abstinence. The clinical community is still searching for a better description of what constitutes effectiveness in alcoholism treatment trials. More informative statistical analysis methods are necessary to arrive at meaningful evidence."

According to a Center for the Advancement of Health report, "Wang and colleagues tested a research tool called the ‘multiple failure time’ approach that asks more nuanced questions than traditional approaches, including: ‘Does the treatment reduce the rate of relapse to heavy drinking?’ They used this approach to re-examine a study that found weakly statistically significant evidence that an alcoholism treatment drug called naltrexone was effective." By taking into account both the time and the frequency of the study participants’ drinking episodes, the researchers noted two things that were overlooked in the first analysis: The risk of having any drinking episodes and any heavy drinking episodes was significantly lower in the group treated with naltrexone rather than a placebo, the report said. Source: The study results were published in the March 2003 journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.