Tag: opioid addiction

Long-term opioid prescribing has not only been shown to not be helpful for chronic pain; it in fact worsens pain by repeatedly causing tolerance and withdrawals (the main symptom of which is pain). This is analogous to how psychiatric drug use, though often helpful initially, ultimately can cause people to become chronically “mentally ill.”

In the 1800s, the British East India Company, aided by England’s parliament which invested in it, profited greatly by selling opium in China. This began what China calls its “century of humiliation” in which a great empire was brought to its knees. Are we at the start of our own lost century, with psych pill and opioid dispensers taking on the BEIC’s role?

From Kaiser Health News: "Two torturous days later, Jeff Duncan came home. While he returned to rehab, the Duncans decided their approach wasn’t working....

From The Boston Globe: " report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that nearly a quarter of overdose deaths in a five-year period occurred...

From The New Republic: "Health authorities and medical researchers widely consider medication-assisted treatment (MAT) with methadone or Suboxone the most effective way of treating opioid...

From TIME: Over the past year, photographer James Nachtwey set out to document the opioid crisis, the worst addiction epidemic in American history. Here, Nachtwey's...

From The Guardian: The British government has ordered an investigation into the growing problem of addiction to prescription drugs such as opioids, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants. Article...

From The New York Times: The opioid epidemic is wreaking havoc on Cherokee families and putting Cherokee children at risk. Now, the Cherokee Nation has...

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...

The quickest way to restore safe use of opioid prescription is to insist that the drug companies that promoted the overuse of opioids now create a pot of money to develop powerful TV, radio, and print ads, free continuing education offerings, and drug rehabilitation research.

Our current, reductionistic approach to mental health issues doesn’t offer any insights or explanations on the etiology of most mental disturbances. Similarly, medication assisted treatment (MAT) focuses on the surface symptoms of opiate abuse without addressing the underlying causes of overwhelming distress and pain.

From The New York Times: In recent years, politicians have shown increased awareness of the opioid epidemic and have made statements about the need for treatment,...

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: Federal investigators recently searched Proove Biosciences, a genetic testing company that purports to determine an individual's likelihood of becoming addicted to opioids. Proove's genetic...

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 National Institutes of Health: NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and NIDA Director Dr. Nora Volkow have co-authored a special report on a new public-private...

From STAT: A new documentary, "The Painful Truth," chronicles the plight of several patients struggling to find treatment for their chronic pain, suggesting that physicians...

The US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is moving to place Kratom, a southeast Asian plant often used in teas, on the schedule 1 banned...

Prince was found dead one day before he was scheduled to meet with Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a national authority on opioid addiction treatment. Within...

“CBS News went to West Virginia, a state that is attempting a drastic solution: allowing addicts to sue the doctors who got them hooked.”