This morning I responded to a woman at SuboxForum. Her baby was taken to the NICU for ‘withdrawal’, which is better identified as neonatal abstinence syndrome. She said that the baby is eating well, but there is concern that the baby sleep only 2 hours at a stretch. The baby Read more…
I subscribe to Google news alerts for the phrase ‘overdose deaths.’ Google Alerts are a great way to follow any topic; subscribers receive headlines from newspapers and web sites for certain keywords from around the world. One thing that has become clear from my subscription is that there is no Read more…
I recently accepted a young man as a patient who was addicted to hydrocodone (the opioid in Vicodin), prompting a discussion about treatment options for someone who hasn’t been using very long, and who hasn’t pushed his tolerance all that high. Perhaps it will be informative to share my thought Read more…
Every now and then I hear about a therapist or addiction doc who is doing such a disservice to the practice of addiction medicine as to deserve special mention. This week’s award goes to a certain counselor at a treatment program in Oshkosh, WI, who I’ll refer to as ‘This Read more…
Today I met with representatives from Alkermes who were promoting Vivitrol, a long-acting mu opioid antagonist that is indicated for treatment of alcoholism and opioid dependence. I admit to some pre-existing bias against the medication. I’m not certain, to be honest, whether that bias was based upon sound clinical reasoning, Read more…
This is not all that new, but it was just pointed out to me recently and I figure many of you will find it interesting. As most readers know, the receptors that mediate the actions of cocaine are completely different than the receptors that are activated during use of opioids. Read more…
I just wrote a note to a friend who works in the molecular sciences– she has been studying opioid receptors since the early 1980’s, when things were just getting started on a molecular level. I’m keeping her name to myself, but I’ll share a few thoughts about what is needed to Read more…
This is a repost from my blog on PsychCentral: There are changes afoot in the use of opioid agonists for chronic pain treatment. This blog has described the epidemic of opioid dependence that has killed tens of thousands of people across the country over the past few years, and the Read more…
I am always impressed by how similar addiction progresses in one individual versus the next. The next reader’s comments and my comments afterward demonstrate a pattern that I have observed in one opioid addict after another. Throughout the book, comments that I receive from others will be italicized. I started Read more…
While I’m on the subject of rip-offs, I’ll mention an extreme form of ‘detox capitalism’; a process called rapid opioid withdrawal, rapid detox, or ‘the Waismann Method.’ The name of the process supposedly comes from a certain ‘Dr. Waismann’ who helped Israeli soldiers get off opioids after they were treated Read more…
Treating myself In the spring of 1993 I took codeine cough medicine for a cold. A few weeks later I was still taking the codeine each evening. It worked so well; finally I could relax and get some quality sleep! I started feeling more irritable in the morning as the Read more…
I’ll take a break from the book to post a question and answer with a reader: My daughter’s doctor recently started prescribing her a pill called only ‘buprenorphine,’ instead of her usual Suboxone. Should I be concerned about the change? My answer: You don’t mention the age of your daughter, Read more…