Topic: co-occurring disorders

…the problems we decide not to deal with at present go on to undermine treatment for the rest.

The physician, meanwhile, depends on the information provided by medical science, usually in the form of materials from the pharma firm that markets the product.

The increased incidence of depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric symptoms linked to OUD may also help to account for high rates of relapse among patients, post-treatment, versus other substance disorders.

In fact, it’s often difficult to convince the trauma patient to seek treatment, in part because of fear of having to re-experience the event.

In the absence of complaints, the prescriber can be tempted to assume things are going well, when in fact they aren’t.

A reasonably good rule of thumb for differentiating results of substance addiction from other illnesses: When the substance use stops for an extended period, the symptoms improve dramatically or go away entirely.

Patients with severe substance disorders may experience depression as a result of the cumulative effects of their substance use.

This goes back to a problem in assessing pain. There’s no physical test for what is essentially a subjective experience.

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.

“I probably would have taken them anyway. I was really hoping for a chemical fix.”