If you think the addiction crisis is new, it’s interesting to note that Sigmund Freud was addicted to cocaine. Yes. That Sigmund Freud. So addiction is not a new problem. You might think that, because we’ve been dealing with addiction for so long, that we would have found a cure for it. At least, you’d…
Reporting on the Opioid Crisis I was interviewed by a reporter yesterday for a column that will soon appear in a national online publication about whether naloxone (opioid antidote) should be available for people who may overdose on opioids. Hmm, I thought, who would not support making a life saving treatment available to people we…
Former New York Giants safety, Tyler Sash, died at age 27 from an accidental pain medication overdose. He’d played 16 years of football, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that, after his death, he was diagnosed with CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is a degenerative brain disease. Have you seen “Concussion,” a movie starring Will Smith as…
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is recommending that all adults get screened for depression. That would update the recommendations set in place in 2009 in two ways. First, all adults over age 18 would be screened for depression. Second, the recommendations would include screening women who are pregnant or who have just given birth.…
Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Markey wants the FDA to rescind its approval of OxyContin for children, and then convene an advisory panel to reconsider the issue. Senator Markey is well intentioned but misinformed. The FDA is not the problem. The agency has not “willfully blinded itself of the warning signs” of prescription painkillers, as Senator…
The China Food and Drug Administration is investigating 35 restaurants in China for potentially using powdered (and possibly addictive) opium poppies to season their food. They detected morphine and codeine as well as other poppy derivatives in the food. The Chinese restaurants involved might view using powdered poppies as an innocuous way to keep patrons…
Thank you to the LA Times for recently running a story about Chris Bell. Chris Bell was producing a documentary about prescription drug abuse. Bell wasn’t only making a documentary about the problem. He was also living it. Bell was using alcohol in combination with Xanax which led to a decline similar to the one…
Can good, old-fashioned fun help people overcome chronic pain? Sometimes. It all depends what we mean by “fun.” One person’s fun is another person’s work For example, therapists have been recommending coloring books to their adult patients for years. The benefits of using crayons (and markers and colored pencils), the theory goes, extends beyond…
For more than fifteen years, I have lectured that addiction is determined by one’s genetic vulnerability and environment. Exposure to a drug is necessary, but not sufficient by itself, to cause the disease of addiction–any addiction. Genetics is more of a factor for opioid addiction than it is for most other forms of addiction, but…
Author’s note: “Emily” is a pseudonym, and she’s someone I know. I’ve changed just enough details of her story to protect her family’s privacy. Four-year-old Emily had a rare form of cancer. She had received chemotherapy every week for about three months. She also had to bear frequent painful procedures. Emily’s mother, Sally, vicariously experienced…
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