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?

Yesterday's post about efforts to support recovery in San Francisco brought some of Bill White's blog posts and this video from the HBO Addiction series to mind. (The video is showing its age with respect to some of the language and content, but it conveys some very salient lessons that haven't changed.) https://youtu.be/WXxxcElL7Cs?t=94 From Bill … Continue reading “addiction and recovery are a reflection of the ecologies in which they are nested”

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle caught my attention this week. It illustrates the challenges big cities are facing with the combination of the behavioral health crisis, the aftermath of the pandemic's disruption, noncarceral responses to drugs, the lack of affordable housing, social responses that frame addiction as secondary to other problems, and the … Continue reading “doing damage control as best we can… but we’re out of ideas”

Brian Coon posted a reaction to the NIAAA definition yesterday. I also recently watched the NIH webinar on the definition. “Recovery is a process through which an individual pursues both remission from AUD and cessation from heavy drinking. Recovery can also be considered an outcome such that an individual may be considered ‘recovered’ if both … Continue reading More on the NIAAA definition of recovery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkC9aTreuQ8 Experiencing Recovery, 2012 Norman E. Zinberg Memorial Lecture, William L. White ...historically the mental health field has had a very well-defined definition of partial recovery but literally no definition, until very recently, a full recovery from severe mental illness. We now have long-term studies of the course and trajectory of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, … Continue reading partial recovery, full recovery, and “better than well”

A friend recently shared a research summary reporting that cannabis users are at higher risk of clots and limb amputation following a common surgery. Researchers at Michigan Medicine analyzed more than 11,000 cases from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Cardiovascular Consortium, known as BMC2, to review patient cannabis use and postoperative outcomes for lower … Continue reading What’s the pathway to recovery for medical patients?

Addiction by Thomas Hawk This interview is brilliant. I've long been wary of extending the boundaries of addiction to food and compulsive behaviors. My concern is that diffusion of the conceptual boundaries of addiction would reinforce stigma. We often hear people describe being addicted to shopping, chocolate, exercise, their phones, social media, sex, gambling, etc. … Continue reading Food addictive?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Pexels.com The video below and the accompanying story grabbed my attention recently. There's been a lot of talk about crime and disorder in many urban areas since the beginning of the pandemic. I haven't known what to make of it because much of the discussion is very politicized. However, it's … Continue reading Safety, order, recovery AND harm reduction