Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, opioid misuse has continued unabated in the United States, with an estimated 2.5 million or more Americans suffering from opioid use disorder. Most people treated for the disorder are given medications, such as buprenorphine, that activate opioid receptors. But there...
Benzodiazepines (a class of sedative medications best known by brand names like Valium, Xanax, and Klonopin) may be prescribed to patients who are receiving buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder (an opioid agonist medication best known in formulation with naloxone, marketed as Suboxone). Clinicians accept that there are both risks,...
Heroin might as well have been plutonium in my slice of suburbia. I knew the risks before taking my first hit. My therapist had prescribed every conceivable antidepressant. Nothing helped. I’d experimented with alcohol and pot and hated the effects. I wasn’t looking to escape...
Abstract Background and aims Evidence from randomized controlled trials establishes that medication treatment with methadone and buprenorphine reduces opioid use and improves treatment retention. However, little is known about the role of such medications compared with non‐medication treatments in mitigating overdose risk among US patient populations receiving...
Physicians who treat opioid addiction also have the option of utilizing ‘medication-assisted treatment,’ and the most common medications used in the treatment of opioid dependence today are methadone, naltrexone, and buprenorphine (Suboxone). Most people cannot just walk away from opioid addiction. They need help to change their thinking,...
hree years ago, I checked myself out of a Colorado detox center against medical advice. I had nowhere to go but the broken-down van in which I’d been sleeping with my husband, but I was in the worst part of heroin withdrawal and all I could think...
1. Introduction Opioid use is epidemic in the US, with overdose deaths increasing nearly 28% from 2015 to 2016, and emergency medicine systems across the country facing a growing burden of overdoses (Vivolo-Kantor et al., 2018). Expanding access to evidence-based medications for opioid use disorder (MOUDs) is a central tool...
Using medications to treat opioid use disorder is a lifesaving cornerstone of treatment — much like insulin for type 1 diabetes. The flawed but widely held view that medications like methadone or buprenorphine are “replacing one addiction for another” prevents many people from getting the...
While my wife and 2-year old daughter watched TV in the living room, I was in the kitchen, measuring the distance from the tip of my index finger to my armpit. I needed to know I could pull the trigger with a shotgun barrel in my...