Topic: prescription medications

In the absence of complaints, the prescriber can be tempted to assume things are going well, when in fact they aren’t.

I’d feel better if I knew some in our brilliant science community were working hard on ways to taper patients, if just the most highly motivated, off the medications with a reduced risk of return to heroin.

A number of experts pointed out the risks associated with a dramatic increase in opioid prescribing. They were ignored in favor of others who downplayed those risks.

Maybe you’ll even suggest the medication. And the marketing team wants you to leave the doctor’s office with a prescription for that med.

Based on the vast number of prescriptions for opioid medications written by US practitioners over the past few decades, we’ve become the clear leaders in opioid prescribing.

Of course, if you work in addiction treatment, you probably see some of these same meds being abused by young adults, often beginning in college or grad school.

It isn’t PhDs in the white lab coats who show up at your doctor’s office to provide false or misleading information about drug safety.

We may be stuck relying on the soft stuff– therapy, support, behavior change, even spiritual growth– all those icky-squicky things that neuroscientists struggle to quantify.

It’s the result of a problem in medicine that’s been going on since before I ever started working in the field. The drugs have changed, but the results haven’t.

As a former insurance VP once put it, you spend your day looking at spreadsheets, you forget there are real people out there depending on you.