(Screen captured from https://ophelia.com/rehab-relapse on 01/21/2022) Ok... let's talk. A company called Ophelia Health has launched a new marketing campaign focusing on the message "F*CK REHAB". On the one hand, there's A LOT to criticize in the addiction treatment world. At the provider level, there is a long history of really bad, predatory, poor quality, … Continue reading Zero Sum, Destructive Treatment Marketing

(This post was originally published on 2/6/2022) Source: NIDA There is and can be no ultimate solution for us to discover, but instead a permanent need for balancing contradictory claims, for careful trade-offs between conflicting values, toleration of difference, consideration of the specific factors at play when a choice is needed, not reliance on an … Continue reading Nora Volkow on More Realistic And Pragmatic Addiction Treatment

Results from the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health were released this week. Here are a few of the highlights. Substance Use Disorder Prevalence 46.3 million people aged 12 or older (or 16.5 percent of the population) met the applicable DSM-5 criteria for having a substance use disorder in the past year, including … Continue reading What to make of the 2021 National Survey on Substance Use and Health report?

The New York Times published a guest essay this weekend challenging the disease model of addiction. I've read several similar pieces over the years and frequently have the same experience. I agree with most of the writer's points, but disagree with his conclusions. Let's walk through it. Annual U.S. overdose deaths recently topped 100,000, a record … Continue reading 2022’s #3 post: Is it misleading to call addiction a disease?

The Recovery Research Institute recently posted a review of a study examining patient and physician definitions of success for opioid treatment beyond treatment retention. The Study The researchers conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with prescribers and patients from 2 family medicine clinics. Interviews were conducted by phone and lasted 20-30 minutes. Physicians 14 physicians All waivered … Continue reading How do patients and prescribers define “success”?

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4f5ncBsokkw9d7bqVX10pJ?si=MfWgOaXWRLeq2L-ATkgTYg I recently listened to this interview with Maike Klein discussing her qualitative research on the experience of relapse in people with addiction who have experienced repeated relapses. Here are a few take-aways: Klein, M., Dixon, J., & Butler, C. (2022). Multiple relapses into opiate and crack misuse among people in recovery: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Journal of Addictions & … Continue reading The experience of addiction relapse

I've often felt very confused about the direction of US drug policy debates have taken over the last decade. I've worked in addictions and recovery since 1994 and have consistently sought to change social responses to alcohol and drug problems from punitive and stigmatizing to therapeutic and recovery-oriented. This happened to put me in alignment … Continue reading Liberalism? Or, libertarianism?

The question of how to describe and categorize addiction has been the subject of several of my recent posts. Some people scratch their heads about why I care so much about whether we think of it as a disease. Bill White summarized the stakes well here: If AOD problems could be solved by physically unraveling … Continue reading 2022’s #9 post: Is it harmful to frame addiction as a disease?

I recently stumbled on this educational page about stigma from the National Harm Reduction Coalition. It's well done and illuminates the assumptions and goals for their stigma reduction efforts. They frame responding to drug use as a choice between liberation and stigma, with harm reduction as the path to liberation. While it may work for … Continue reading 2022’s #10 post: Addiction, Stigma, and Liberation

I recently read this article envisioning minimally disruptive treatment for opioid use disorder. People who use drugs have long called for reforms to make opioid use disorder (OUD) care more patient-centered and less disruptive. Their calls align with broader healthcare transformation efforts, particularly to create “minimally disruptive” systems. Minimally disruptive medicine (MDM) is a “patient-centered … Continue reading *Strategically* disruptive treatment?