Bill White has a new post challenging the recovering community to be more pluralistic and let go of notions that there is one path to recovery: Embracing recovery pluralism is not an embrace of recovery relativism in which opinions and preferences completely dominate facts. To be tolerant of the varieties of recovery experience is not … Continue reading Recovery Pluralsim
Tag: Health
Smoke Screens
Bill White recently posted on tobacco use in recovery. He's been way ahead of the field on this and challenges not only treatment providers, but recovering people as well: People in recovery are dying from smoking-related diseases in large numbers, but they are also dying from conceptual blindness: the failure to see the … Continue reading Smoke Screens
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
Recovery coaches for chronic disease management
We've been talking about talking about peer supports and recovery coaches for more than a decade. The use of para-professionals in the field goes back several decades. Now, a new study evaluates a similar role for enhancing management of other chronic diseases. Disease Management Care Blog provides a little analysis: There is increasing interest in incorporating lay-persons in the outpatient … Continue reading Recovery coaches for chronic disease management
“manifestly unsuitable for (psychiatric) treatment”
Will Self reviews a recently published book on psychiatry and has some interesting observations on the relationships between addicts, mutual aid groups and psychiatry: Interestingly there is one large sector of the "mentally ill" that Burns believes are manifestly unsuitable for treatment – drug addicts and alcoholics. He points to the ineffectiveness of almost all … Continue reading “manifestly unsuitable for (psychiatric) treatment”
What happened to the “crack babies”?
Dirk Hansen reports the good news about "crack babies": In a paper authored by Hurt, Laura M Betancourt, and others, the investigators write: “It is now well established that gestational cocaine exposure has not produced the profound deficits anticipated in the 1980s and 1990s, with children described variably as joyless, microcephalic, or unmanageable.” The authors do … Continue reading What happened to the “crack babies”?
What makes treatment effective?
I've been catching a lot of heat recently for posts about Suboxone and methadone. (For the sake of this post, lets refer to them as opioid replacement therapy, or ORT, for the rest of this post. One commenter who blogs for an ORT provider challenged my arguments that we should offer everyone the same kind … Continue reading What makes treatment effective?
Regulating the marijuana market
The Partnership at Drugfree.org reports the results of a recent survey: There is strong support for a wide array of stringent post-legalization marijuana regulations to protect minors and the community wellbeing. The research shows intense support (above or near 90 percent) for: Setting a legal age of 21 Prohibiting marijuana smoking in public places Severe … Continue reading Regulating the marijuana market
Why “medical” marijuana gets little respect here
Mark Kleiman, the Washington state pot czar, explains his use of "scare quotes" when writing about medical marijuana: Yes, cannabis has medical value for some people. And yes, the sustained effort of the federal government to make medical cannabis research as difficult as possible is a national disgrace. And then, on the other … Continue reading Why “medical” marijuana gets little respect here
Solving the prescription opioid problem
I've posted several times recently on the problem of opioid over-prescription and overdose. Some might assume that I want some regulatory or statutory intervention to address the issue. Truth is, I've got more questions than answers and I would not support a response that forces us to choose between treating pain and preventing addiction and … Continue reading Solving the prescription opioid problem
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