A Chronic Case
Risk goes up with advancing age and declining health, and this patient, a former star athlete still in his early 30’s, is a better candidate for surgery than many.
Category: Treatment
What works? For who? What doesn’t? Why? A complicated disease makes for complexities in treatment.
Treatment
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Chronic Relapse and Secondary Gain
By secondary gain, I’m referring to a psychological or emotional advantage or benefit that occurs from an illness or behavioral disorder.
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Booze-Opioid Connection
After the third incident, the doc gave him an ultimatum – either get help or face a taper off the program.
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The Nausea Solution
Of the patients I met, all decided on aversion therapy for essentially the same reason: they’d tried other things, experienced relapse, and lost patience.
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Opioid Tapering
Of more than 9000 Veterans Administration patients, only one-quarter rated their pain control with opioids as excellent or very good.
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Elder and Addicted
For many people, however, including helping professionals, it’s tempting to just give up
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Groups That Work: Values
Effective working groups can continue their traditions through surprising changes in location, membership, etc.
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Life Without Opioids
We shouldn’t ignore the emotional factors involved in chronic pain– such as anxiety and depression.
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Proposing a Plan
This is in part a course correction from the trend of several decades ago, when the emphasis was on cutting expenses in the naive belief all addicts could be successfully treated on an outpatient basis.
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Coercion in Massachusetts
I compare it to finding someone lying on the sidewalk, helping them up, brushing them off, and pushing them down again.
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Treatment and Coercion
Those of us who work in treatment quickly sense a problem: people with addictions aren’t likely to respond to this approach.
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Medical Cannabis in Addiction Treatment
The field is getting accustomed to patients arriving in addiction treatment complaining of problems with prescription opioids, stimulants, sedatives, etc, while actively enrolled in medical cannabis programs.
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Why No Opioid Taper?
Not everybody wants to remain dependent on pain medication. But at present, we offer few if any alternatives to doing it on your own.
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