I see professionals and advocates criticize Narcotics Anonymous (NA) on a near daily basis for their views on opioid agonist medications (methadone and buprenorphine), often referring to them as problematic, backwards, and complicit in the opioid overdose crisis. The published guidance for groups is here and might be summarized as follows: implying that people on … Continue reading NA and “understanding their reality”

I saw some questions about what it means. Here's a little more context. 2002 - Reckitt Benckiser introduced Suboxone. 2010 - Suboxone's patent is expiring and Reckitt Benckiser claimed that Suboxone pills present a safety hazard to children and should be pulled off the market while they introduce a new film version with a new … Continue reading More on that Suboxone settlement

From ABC News: Suboxone maker Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB Group) will pay the U.S. government a record $1.4 billion to end criminal and civil probes into the marketing of its addiction treatment medication, making it the largest settlement related to the opioid crisis in U.S. history, authorities said on Thursday. This would appear to be tied for the … Continue reading Suboxone maker to pay $1.4 billion in largest opioid settlement in US history

https://twitter.com/KeithNHumphreys/status/1146828515221725185

First, we are currently witnessing rapid change / evolution / destabilization of the conceptual boundaries of recovery. How do these changes affect what it means to call a program or system recovery-oriented? What differentiates a recovery-oriented provider from others? Second, Bill White frequently shares his epiphany that the orientation of research and service providers was … Continue reading A couple of questions

Possible selves interventions + improving treatment access + harm reduction = recovery-oriented harm reduction

In recent years there's been a lot of attention and energy devoted to reclassifying addiction from a disease to something else--a "disease" of despair, a lack of social connection, a product of injustice and hardship, a product of deprived environments, a learning disorder, etc. Now, there's a recent study getting attention that suggests teaching clients … Continue reading Is calling addiction a disease harmful?

This article was shared by a friend today. Several previous posts have spoken to recent attention to language in recovery advocacy. (See here and here.) I think may have pointed to LGBT+ communities' use of words like "queer" when questioning whether we should change our own language to reduce the stigma that others harbor toward … Continue reading Person-first or identity-first?

So . . . Monday I posted about a study of a low barrier buprenorphine program. Toward the end of that post, I raised the tension between treatment-as-harm-reduction and treatment-as-recovery-facilitation and shared a quote from an emergency physician questioning the evidence-base for buprenorphine dispensed in emergency departments, as well as its effectiveness at facilitating "sobriety." … Continue reading Addiction treatment, palliative care, or both?

There was a lot of enthusiasm about this study on twitter recently. It appears to be based on this program highlighted in the NY Times last year. . . . city health workers are taking to the streets to find homeless people with opioid use disorder and offering them buprenorphine prescriptions on the spot. The … Continue reading Low barrier buprenorphine treatment for persons experiencing homelessness and injecting heroin