Opiates

A new study examines the extent to which patterns in prescription drug misuse and substance use disorder symptoms can be predicted by education level

From The New York Times: For decades, America has waged an ineffective war on illicit drug dealers and drug lords. However, we have failed to...

Primary care clinicians and mental health providers face a particular set of challenges when treating individuals with chronic pain. These problems are compounded by...

From Scientific American: In a day and age when people are increasingly becoming addicted to prescription drugs, and increasingly helped by the therapeutic effects of illicit...

In this piece for Esquire, Christopher Glazek profiles the Sacklers, the family that owns the pharmaceutical company that manufactures OxyContin. He investigates how the Sacklers' marketing...

Researchers investigate trends in opioid use, prescriptions, misuse, and access reported by adolescents and young adults.

From The Lown Institute: The recent deaths of several beloved musicians, actors, and other public figures have brought to light the dangers of taking multiple, potentially fatal drugs. "In...

From The Atlantic: As opioid abuse rises, some attorneys general and advocates are filing lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies for misleading doctors and the public about...

From EDS and Chronic Pain News & Info: Recent legislation has proposed measures that permit people to be involuntarily committed on the basis of perceived...

From The Boston Globe: Conceptualizing addiction as a biological brain disease is often ineffective, as the biological model overlooks the important psychological and social factors that...

From Medscape: While policymakers and members of the general public are justifiably focused on addressing the opioid epidemic, there is another epidemic that may be...

From It's Not Just an Opioid Crisis: The media are saturated with coverage of the familial and community devastation that has resulted from the opioid...

From Alternet: The pharmaceutical industry has played a major role in causing the opioid crisis by downplaying the potentially addictive and fatal effects of narcotic pain...

In this piece for RT, Slavoj Žižek discusses the impact of capitalism on America's opioid crisis, exploring the factors that have driven people to use drugs...

An exclusive analysis by CNN and researchers at Harvard University found that opioid manufacturers are paying physicians huge sums of money — and that doctors with higher...

In this piece for The Washington Post, Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein investigate how a handful of members of Congress, allied with some of the nation's...

A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey of 1000 US primary care physicians found that many do not understand basic medical facts about the addictive nature of the opioids they are prescribing.

From The Atlantic: Throughout history, doctors have often stigmatized and discounted patients suffering from pain without visible injury. The rise of X-rays and other "objective"...

Last year the British Medical Association (BMA) released a report on dependence and withdrawal from prescription drugs including benzodiazepines, z-drugs, opioids, and antidepressants. Now,...

From The Onion: "Visibly trembling as he wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead, Arcelis Pharmaceuticals CEO Paul Corrier told reporters Wednesday that he could...

In this piece for Alternet, Joshua Wilkey discusses his grandmother's addiction to opioid painkillers and details the role that pharmaceutical companies have played in Appalachia's opioid...

From STAT: Last month, Senator Claire McCaskill released a report showing that opioid manufacturers had funneled nearly $9 million to patient advocacy groups between 2012...

Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), authored an editorial for BMJ this month warning that the opioid abuse epidemic could have dangerous consequences for pregnant women. While the effects of opioid exposure on the developing brain are yet unknown, research suggests that infants may suffer from withdrawal syndrome, nervous system defects, and impaired attachment with the mother.

From STAT: The FDA is now recommending that physicians learn about a variety of approaches to pain management, including non-pharmacologic therapies such as chiropractic care...

Psychologist and Professor Amber Gum has published the story of her personal journey of rethinking psychotropic medication in a special issue on "The Politics of Mental Health" in The Journal of Medicine and the Person. Influenced by Mad in America and the work of Robert Whitaker, Gum became aware of evidence that “suggests that psychotropic medications are less effective and more harmful than most believe” and now hopes to encourage other mental health professionals and researchers to engage in open-minded, critical self-assessment of standard practices.