Medical Management and Suboxone: When a NewDay client is admitted to Intensive Outpatient, they are seen upfront by our director of medical services, Dr. Michael Hall. The client receives a physical, drug screen, blood work and assessment to determine if they need medication to…
Addiction statistics are grim. It’s not a pleasant topic, but more people need to know these harsh facts. The statistics below come from the Addiction Center website – please click on the link and read the whole article. As the first statistic shows, the…
I’ve written several times about recovery from opioid addiction, but it’s a complex subject and requires a great deal of explanation. Most people now have likely heard the horror stories of addiction, overdose and death, but not so much about recovery. The horror stories sell and…
It’s easy to blame doctors for the rise in opioid addiction, but this isn’t fair to doctors. The issue of opioids and doctors is tricky. Patients with chronic pain require pain medication, and the best pain medication is usually some type of opioid – opioids can be addictive. Doctors share some…
In Chapter 5 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous there’s a warning about alcoholics seeking an easier, softer way to deal with alcoholism. Often someone suffering from addiction will seek help through a friend, a pastor, their doctor, a family member or maybe an individual therapist. I…
I don’t really understand the resistance to medication assisted treatment (MAT) for addiction — according to NIH: Medications are Not Widely Used Less than 1/2 of privately-funded substance use disorder treatment programs offer MAT and only 1/3 of patients with opioid dependence at these…
The good news in the midst of the heroin epidemic is that treating heroin addiction is possible and recovery is likely if a comprehensive treatment plan is followed long term. There are many recovering heroin addicts in Narcotics Anonymous who’ve been drug free for decades….
The combination of alcohol and opiates is complicating the already serious problems of alcoholism and opiate addiction. Using both creates a synergistic effect where the combination is greater than the sum of its parts — one drug increases the other’s effectiveness. But this increased effect is…
I’ve written quite a bit about opioid addiction here. One of the main points I try to establish is that in order to effectively deal with this national epidemic, we must understand the problem and stop stigmatizing addiction. I’ve dealt with addiction in general since 1983…
Opioids once referred to synthetic opiates, such as Oxycontin. Opiates referred to drugs derived from opium, such as heroin. Now, most people in the medical field use the term opioids to refer to all opiate-like drugs, natural, synthetic or semi-synthetic. So, when I write opioids, I’m referring…
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