In 2016, news reports warned the public of an opioid epidemic gripping the nation. But Madeline Vaughn, then a lead clinical intake coordinator at the Houston-based addiction treatment organization Council on Recovery, sensed something different was going on with the patients she checked in from the street. Their behavior, marked…
Newly Approved Opioid 10 Times Stronger Than Fentanyl
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new opioid painkiller that is 10 times stronger than fentanyl, USA Today reports. The drug, Dsuvia, is also 1,000 times more potent than morphine. It will be restricted to limited use only in health care settings, such as hospitals, emergency rooms and surgery…
Pain isn’t just physical—why many are using painkillers for emotional relief
Australians are increasingly using prescription or over-the-counter painkillers to ease emotional, rather than physical, pain. Our cultural understanding of pain is changing, and as a result it’s becoming more difficult to distinguish intoxication from relief. In my recently published book A Fine Line: Painkillers and Pleasure in the Age of Anxiety,…
People who use medical marijuana more likely to use and misuse other prescription drugs
Can medical marijuana help to fight the opioid epidemic? Many believe that it can. But a new study finds that people who use medical marijuana actually have higher rates of medical and non-medical prescription drug use — including pain relievers. The study appears in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official…
Stigma continues to hamper response to opioid epidemic
Efforts to reverse the nation’s opioid epidemic remain beset by the stigma associated with drug use, a group of OHSU researchers write in a year-end review. The stigma continues despite the fact that more than one-third of the American population used prescription opioids as of 2015, the authors report. With…