There are millions of addiction recovery stories, but not enough are covered in the media – except when it involves a celebrity. Here are some of our favorite famous addiction recovery stories. Celebrities are humans, just like us, and despite their fame, money and cool occupation, many celebrities have gone on to suffer from an…
Preliminary data shows that opioid deaths have fallen (maybe) by 5 percent in 2018 — the first drop in overdose deaths since the country’s opioid epidemic began in the 1990s. The statistics about opioid abuse in general are shocking. The data, first reported by the New York Times, seems like good news. A 5 percent…
Substance Abuse and Homelessness For years, scientists, government agencies and others have been studying the link between substance abuse and homelessness. The two are directly related and studies reaffirm this. For example: substance abuse can lead to homelessness and vice versa. That’s probably no surprise to anyone, especially if you’ve seen celebrities struggle with addiction.…
Questions to Ask Your Treatment Provider If you’re thinking about going to or sending someone into treatment, you need to know what questions to ask your treatment provider. This is the minimum amount of due diligence that must be done to ensure any reasonable chance of success. There are many reasons that getting it right…
Treatment of Substance Use Disorders In a recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), substance use disorders (SUDs) were divided into two distinct categories–substance abuse and substance dependence. An individual could receive a current diagnosis of either abuse or dependence (not both) for a single drug class. A current SUD…
Opioid Doctors Face Jail A Virginia doctor was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Wednesday October 2, 2019, for prescribing a half-million doses of opioids to patients over two years, prosecutors said. Dr. Joel Smithers, 36, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Abingdon. He was found guilty in May of more than 800 counts of illegally…
Medication-assisted treatment programs use a few alternatives to dangerous opioids. Medications, including buprenorphine (Suboxone®, Subutex®), methadone, and extended-release naltrexone (Vivitrol®), are effective for the treatment of opioid use disorders. Buprenorphine and methadone are “essential medicines” according to the World Health Organization. A NIDA study shows that once treatment is initiated, a buprenorphine/naloxone combination and an…
Does Science Still Believe that Gateway Drugs can Lead to Addiction? We’ve been hearing this for decades: marijuana is a gateway drug. Our parents told us this over and over again, but what does science say? f you grew up as part of the D.A.R.E. generation — kids of the 1980s and ’90s who learned…
Addiction recovery stories are always encouraging to hear. They all share one common trait – no two are alike. Everyone has a different path to recovery. Addiction is a disease – that’s a fact that’s no longer disputed, but taking that first dose, that first hit, was a choice – and that’s all people seem…
The Drug That Could Combat the Heroin Epidemic On the other end of the spectrum of opioid agonist drugs like methadone and buprenorphine are the opioid antagonists, including the drug naloxone. In addition to being able to inhibit the activation of opioid receptors, naloxone acts as a competitive antagonist and is able to actively reverse…