Thinking About Addiction

It’s an illness that at different times seems to respond to everything and nothing. As in ‘everything works for someone, and nothing works for everyone.’

Problems show up first in hospital emergency rooms and in jails. Those are the closest thing we have to an early warning system.

Medicare spending on compounded topical drugs has surged 3400% since 2006.

Once the demand for a drug is well-established, as it is for alcohol, people will find a way to get it, legal or otherwise.

Like the film where Amy Shumer chugs boxed wine, and inadvertently drives up sales to admiring fans.

To support revenues, companies look for ways to augment or alter older products and justify price increases.

It usually comes back to the assumption that another problem ‘underlies’ addiction, and therefore will respond to treatment with the “right” drug, if we can figure out what it is.

Sadly, the notion of addiction as a disease remains counter-intuitive for many Americans, who instead assume it’s the user’s own fault, the result of some horrendously unwise decision-making process.

Psychologists say that for many the goal is simply to enter and remain in what’s called ‘the zone’

Suddenly Pueblo finds itself facing problems typical of a much larger city.