Yesterday, I posted about The Anonymous People and Dawn Farm's co-sponsorship of an upcoming screening of the film. So...why is this message of recovery so important to stigma reduction? We've spent 20 years trying to convince the public that addiction is a brain disease without too much attention to the potential for this message to … Continue reading Brain disease does not equal stigma reduction
Category: Policy
If it wasn’t rational, they wouldn’t be doing it
Ugh. The NY Times has another column promoting a rational addiction model. "When they were given an alternative to crack, they made rational economic decisions.” ... When methamphetamine replaced crack as the great drug scourge in the United States, Dr. Hart brought meth addicts into his laboratory for similar experiments — and the results showed … Continue reading If it wasn’t rational, they wouldn’t be doing it
Recover from ==> Recovery to
Commenter Web Servant responded to the a recent "Sentence to Ponder" from Bill White about the need to expand the scope of treatment and recovery services that create pathways to natural community supports and adopt a wellness model. His comments seem worthy of a post of their own. The place of treatment in recovery is … Continue reading Recover from ==> Recovery to
Inside the Shady World of Sober Homes
Pacific Standard has a horrifying article about a sober home in NYC. It sounds like a perfect storm of greed, corruption and incompetence. Its not quite that bad here, but there are a lot of really bad sober housing programs and I really don't know how a client could sort out the decent programs from … Continue reading Inside the Shady World of Sober Homes
What’s in that weed?
From Addiction Inbox: Australia has one of the highest rates of marijuana use in the world, but until recently, nobody could say for certain what, exactly, Australians were smoking. Researchers at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales recently analyzed hundreds of cannabis samples seized by Australian police, and … Continue reading What’s in that weed?
Happy Labor Day!
The video's got nothing to do with recovery, but it's a great song and is apropos for Labor Day. While we're on the subject of labor, Bill White had a post a while back on the subject: In 2011, Dieter Henkel of the Institute for Addiction Research at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, … Continue reading Happy Labor Day!
Feds won’t challenge states with marijuana legalization
This is big news. And, I think it's good news. The Obama administration on Thursday said it will not stand in the way of Colorado, Washington and other states where voters have supported legalizing marijuana either for medical or recreational use, as long as those states maintain strict rules involving distribution of the drug. In … Continue reading Feds won’t challenge states with marijuana legalization
Suboxone diversion?
A recent study looking at diversion of buprenorphine finds that: While 9% reported recent street-obtained buprenorphine use, only a small minority reported using buprenorphine to get high, with the majority reporting use to manage withdrawal symptoms. The use of street-obtained buprenorphine primarily to avoid withdrawal fits with Dawn Farm's experience, though the percentage would be … Continue reading Suboxone diversion?
Quality of life and death
A study out of Australia looks at death rates among opioid addicts receiving opioid substitution treatment (OST, for short. It's methadone.) in New South Wales between 1985-2005. It's a HUGE sample--43,789 people. If fact, the paper says: This cohort is likely to represent the majority of opioid dependent people in that State during this period, … Continue reading Quality of life and death
Known unknowns and unknown unknowns
John Horgan challenges scientism embraced by Stephen Pinker. He explains what Pinker said and where they agree: Pinker faults Humists for accusing scientists of “scientism,” which could be defined as excessive trust in science. Attempting rhetorical jujitsu, Pinker suggests that science, because it is such a uniquely self-critical and successful generator of knowledge, deserves all … Continue reading Known unknowns and unknown unknowns
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