Topic: opioids

Modern healthcare, for all its spectacular innovation, still lacks a genuinely safe, effective remedy for certain types of pain.

America consumes the vast majority of the world’s opioids.

The addicted brain is unable to accurately evaluate the situation.

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.

This isn’t a problem a physician can deal with comfortably in the context of a 12-15 minute office visit.

Would you respond to this information with a concerted effort at self-examination and profound behavior change?

Naloxone is there to prevent someone from injecting Suboxone to get high.

Might be that clinicians can teach patients to activate their own body’s placebo response, in order to feel better.

It’s hard to accept that what began in an effort to help people in pain has turned into this unholy mess.

I’ve come to view it more as a tool for harm reduction than a path to long term recovery, with some notable exceptions.