Not On the FAQ
I’ve written the first two parts of a three-part column about unintended consequences. Part one described why discounts demanded from insurers for front-line services (e.g. office visits) create challenges for independent primary care practices that don’t have other sources of revenue, particularly revenue from procedures. Part two explained why physicians employed by health systems are […] (Source: Suboxone Talk Zone)
Source: Suboxone Talk Zone - September 16, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: J T Junig Tags: Addiction Buprenorphine Methadone Public policy Suboxone addiction treatment affordable care act Medicaid medicaid coverage of buprenorphine obamacare Source Type: blogs
Pain drugs will need new warnings to alert patients and doctors about
their dangers.
Each year, 16,000 people in the US die of overdoses that include prescription opioids— and the extended-release and long-acting drugs such as Oxycontin or methadone are disproportionately responsible for such deaths. While currently labeled to treat moderate to severe pain, the drugs will now carry warnings that indicate the drugs are to be used only “for the management of pain severe enough to require daily, around-the-clock opioid treatment and for which alternative treatments are inadequate.” New warnings about the withdrawal syndrome that can affect newborns exposed during pregnancy, which can be life-t...
Source: PharmaGossip - September 11, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Cases: "Do you have something stronger than this dilaudid?" The case for opioid rotation
Discussion:
Opioid rotation, or trial of an alternative opioid, is commonly practiced when a patient’s pain responds poorly to one opioid or intolerable side effects develop. These intolerable side effects may include nausea, vomiting, sedation, or even hyperalgesia. Although rotation is a common practice, a Cochrane review in 2004 found that evidence to support the practice for opioid rotation was anecdotal and in non-controlled studies. Randomized trials were suggested. Since that time, several prospective studies have been performed where opioid analgesic effect was inadequate or side effects to the opioid were intol...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - September 6, 2013 Category: Palliative Carer Workers Authors: Christian Sinclair Source Type: blogs
Real Teens Ask: What Are the Different Types of Opioids?
This past Drug Facts Chat Day, teens from across the country submitted their questions about drug abuse to NIDA scientists.
A teen from Walter Johnson High School in Maryland asked, “What types of opioids are there?”
In general, opioids are psychoactive chemicals that work by binding to opioid receptors in the body. These receptors are found principally in the central and peripheral nervous system as well as the gastrointestinal tract and can produce both the good and bad effects of opioid use.
Many teens don’t know that there are illegal opioids (like heroin) as well as legal opioids that are prescribed for pain rel...
Source: NIDA Drugs and Health Blog - September 4, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Sara Bellum Source Type: blogs
Study Finds ‘Doctor Shopping’ Uncommon - National Pain Report - National Pain Report
Less than one percent of patients – about 135,000 people — who purchase prescription painkillers in the U.S. were classified as "doctor shoppers" in the first national study of opioid prescriptions and sales records.But while they make up only a small proportion of the 48 million patients who are prescribed painkillers, researchers say patients who visit multiple doctors and pharmacies to obtain opioids are having an outsized impact on the system. Federal and state officials have cracked down on the illicit use of painkillers by making it harder for patients to obtain opioids – even ones with legitimate prescriptions...
Source: Psychology of Pain - August 14, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Crack Babies Are Turning Out Okay
Major study concludes that crack panic was overblown.
In an excellent story for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Susan FitzGerald traces the fortunes of Philadelphia children enrolled in a study that began in 1989, at the height of the crack “epidemic” in the U.S. Headed up by Hallam Hurt, then the chair of neonatology at Albert Einstein Medical Center, a group began the in-vitro study of babies exposed to maternal crack cocaine use. One of the longest-running studies of its kind, the NIDA-funded research on 224 babies born between 1989 and 1992, half of them cocaine-exposed, the other half normal controls, was now coming t...
Source: Addiction Inbox - July 28, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Addiction Trajectories: Book Review
This study of faith-based healing in the addiction recovery community forms one chapter of a new volume, Addiction Trajectories, edited by Eugene Raikhel of the University of Chicago and William Garriott of James Madison University.
What anthropologists can do for addiction science is document these sociocultural attributes of addiction. In a chapter on buprenorphine and methadone users in New York City and the five boroughs, Helena Hansen, assistant professor of anthropology and psychiatry at New York University, finds that buprenorphine users live in predominantly white, high-income neighborhoods, tended to have college...
Source: Addiction Inbox - June 25, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Profiting From Pain - NYTimes.com
NEWS ANALYSISProfiting From PainBy BARRY MEIERThe use of narcotic painkillers, or opioids, has boomed over the past decade as drug makers and doctors have promoted them for a new use: treating long-term pain from back injuries, headaches, arthritisand conditions like fibromyalgia. Insurers have also grown to see pills as a cheaper way to treat chronic pain than other methods.MultimediaSome patients are greatly helped by opioids, a large family of medications. Among the more widely used opioids are oxycodone, which is found in Percocet and OxyContin, and hydrocodone, which is used in Vicodin. Other poten...
Source: Psychology of Pain - June 23, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
My Answer To The Question – What are the long term affects of Methadone?
Many of you like the questions and answers on this blog. I just found another one from ‘Amber D.’ who asks
My boyfriend and I have been dating for four years now and he has been addicted to Methadone for 5 years. He thinks it is perfectly safe and that there are no long term affects of this drug. I say a drug is a drug no matter what it is or what doctor says it is safe. I think if you need help or are sick then that’s when you should use a drug but you should never abuse a drug.
Answer: Methadone is used to help heroin addicts stay off heroin, if he is a recovery heroin addict and the doctor has prescr...
Source: Addiction Recovery Blog - June 21, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Addiction Recovery Author Tags: Meth Recovery Source Type: blogs
Home Palliative Care: Is there proof in the pudding?
This month, the Cochrane Collaboration has released a review of home palliative services for adults with advanced illness and their caregivers. The authors, led by Barbara Gomes, MSc, PhD, set the primary outcome as occurrence of death at home. Secondary outcomes included the time the patient spent at home, satisfaction with care, management and degree of pain and other symptoms, symptom burden, physical function, quality of life and caregiver pre and post bereavement outcomes. Economic data was also examined and included hospital costs, other institutional care costs, community care costs, informal care costs, and equipme...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - June 20, 2013 Category: Palliative Carer Workers Authors: Emily Riegel Source Type: blogs
Brain Chemistry Altered by Later Life Experience, Part 2
I recently wrote of an informative NBC News article of June 2, 2013 (see part 1 here). Investigative reporter Rebecca Ruiz laid out medical research evidence pointing toward non-genetic alterations in brain chemistry — that is, organic changes in the brain’s chemistry after birth.
Specifically, Ruiz’s article was centered around the behavioral concept of resiliency. She provided medical research and testimony, as well as case study, that early formative experiences may produce structural adaptations to genes
Amazing, that early experiences can have such an impact on the developing physical brain. But what ab...
Source: World of Psychology - June 16, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Lisa A. Miles Tags: Addiction Alcoholism Brain and Behavior Depression Disorders General Medications Mental Health and Wellness Psychology Research Substance Abuse Treatment Addictions Agonist Antabuse anxiety Brain Chemistry Brain Structure Source Type: blogs
The Painful Politics of Painkillers Opioids are deadlier than ever, but
research into cannabis is still taboo
Opioids like oxycodone and methadone have been prescribed for pain relief since the early 1900s. But the rise of these painkillers, most notably Oxycontin, as a panacea treatment for chronic pain in the past two decades has been costly. Dr. Barth Wilsey, a physician specializing in chronic pain at the University of California Davis Medical Center, has watched their growth with increasing concern. Although he recalls only one patient death in his 17-year career, it's not an uncommon way to go: In 2010, 22,134 people died from prescription drug overdoses, a number that has quadrupled since 1999.“In my perspective,” says ...
Source: PharmaGossip - June 13, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Anonymous Recovery Group Links
This list below comes to you from Faces and Voices of Recovery
(http://www.facesandvoicesofrecovery.org/resources/support_home.php)
Individual Addiction Recovery Resources
Addictions VictoriousAdvocates For the Integration of Recovery and Methadone, Inc. (AFIRM)Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)Alcoholics for Christ Alcoholics Victorious (AV)Celebrate Recovery Chemically Dependent Anonymous Online Resource Center (CDA)Cocaine Anonymous (CA)Crystal Meth Anonymous (CMA)Harm Reduction Network (HAMS) Heroin Anonymous (HA)J.A.C.S. (Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others)LifeRing: Secular RecoveryMarijuana...
Source: Recovery Is Sexy.com - May 2, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Sparrow Tags: 12 Step Fellowships Adult Children of Alcoholics Al-anon Alateen Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Victorious Cocaine Anonymous Debtors Anonymous Emotions Anonymous Gam-anon Gamblers Anonymous Gamers Anonymous HIV Anonymous Marijua Source Type: blogs
Where Are All the New Anti-Craving Drugs?
The dilemma of dwindling drug development.
Drugs for the treatment of addiction are now a fact of life. For alcoholism alone, the medications legally available by prescription include disulfiram (Antabuse), naltrexone (Revia and Vivitrol)—and acamprosate (Campral), the most recent FDA-approved entry. A fourth entry, topiramate (Topamax), is currently only approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other uses. But none of these are miracle medications, and more to the point, no bright new stars have come through the FDA pipeline for a long time.
New approvals for drugs in this category, like psychiatric d...
Source: Addiction Inbox - April 30, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Q&A – What are the side affects of taking methadone and opiates? and please read..?
Here’s a good question from Rosie with an even better answer, enjoy:
My Mother has been taking Methadone for some time and she needs help..She get’s weekly amounts and then takes to muchj and then go through withdrawls. But when she does have it she mixes it with other opiates. Whatever she can get her hands on ….HELP..She is so messed up? What do I do? What are the sider effects of methadone and opiates together …then going through withdrawl because she takes to much methadone when she gets her weekly doses?
Answer: That’s a surprisingly common pattern, and I dare say methadone clinics are n...
Source: Addiction Recovery Blog - April 20, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Addiction Recovery Author Tags: Opiate Treatment Source Type: blogs
