CUD — How Severe is Severe?
Of course, even when someone else sees CUD is advanced, it can take quite a while for the user to realize how bad things are.
Category: Addiction
One of the oldest diseases in the world, and we still don’t know as much as we should about its causes, effects, and how to treat it- much less cure it. What we do know, and what we’re learning, ends up here:
Addiction
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MDs Confronting SUDs
I imagine it takes a special kind of practitioner to push aside the barriers in the system to get to the SUD that lies underneath, even when he or she knows it’s there.
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Lessons Learned– Again
Hint: Just insisting that you’re not bluffing this time won’t convince that young man, or many others of his kind. He’ll need to be shown.
In an atmosphere such as this – already ‘spoiled’, we might say – any response must be carefully thought through and planned.
AA vs Some Online Resources
…the real barrier for many newcomers to AA was the fear that ultimately, they would be required to stop drinking entirely, on a permanent basis.
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What About Safe Injection Sites?
They’ve been shown to reduce the likelihood of an overdose fatality, but also to reduce the risk of disease and disease transmission; increase access to needed services…and to some extent, reduce criminal conduct.
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Drinking Problem, or Problem with Drinking?
I’m not sure the author realizes that almost all the drinkers who wind up in addiction treatment do so after having gone through a period of questioning whether or not they deserve a label such as alcoholic.
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The Old Normal
It’s still what we tend to think of as ‘normal’. Held up as what we hope to return to, someday when the pandemic is over and sanity has returned.
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Fentanyl Sneaks In
There’s a long history of people dying from the cocaine-opioid combo, commonly known as a ‘speedball’. The actor John Belushi is one. Philip Seymour Hoffman, River Phoenix are others. We could go on.
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An Awful Withdrawal
I’d argue that for many years, we paid too much attention to acute withdrawal and too little to the other aspects of opioid recovery, especially relapse prevention.
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The New Stoners
People with well-established patterns of use (including frequent users) have probably learned to self-medicate the discomfort of withdrawal by using more cannabis.
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An Insider’s Take on Gambling Promotion
Bettors at the race track report feeling a distinct sense of relief after they place a bet – again, regardless of the outcome. “That’s what I was chasing,” admitted one person now in recovery. “That feeling. Except it doesn’t last. So you keep chasing.”
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Hospital Consults — Are They Worth It?
I asked a number of the attending docs if they’d spoken with the patient about the problem, and was startled by how rarely the answer was yes.
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Back to Blackouts
She was continually being surprised when others reported what she’d said and done during her blackouts. The memories themselves never returned.
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