http://www.theonion.com/graphic/tips-handling-social-anxieties-53168
Millions of Americans find social settings uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing. The Onion provides some tips for dealing with social anxiety:
If you’re in a public place and find yourself feeling physically uncomfortable, check to make sure you’re not just sitting weird in your chair.
Have you tried running? Running worked for Jeff…
http://www.theonion.com/americanvoices/five-second-rule-disproven-53167
Here we have another one-sided article from the New York Times, this one about the abuse of drugs used to treat addiction.
http://www.edsinfo.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/addicted-to-a-treatment-for-addiction/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/addicted-to-a-treatment-for-addiction.html?_r=0
“Let’s be clear,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny, a longtime Suboxone prescriber in New York and executive director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. “The real crisis is the severe epidemic of opioid addiction and overdose deaths that’s devastating families across the country.”
And here we have Mr. Kolodny, still trying to convince everyone that drugs like Suboxone aren’t part of the opioid family. As if there aren’t any families that have been devastated by deaths related to the use of bupe, methadone, and Suboxone.
It says a lot about how lazy the media is that it uses “experts” like Kolodny. And they never include important facts about Kolodny, like the criminal investigations into some of his Phoenix Houses. Like how Kolodny started his work with addiction in the New York prison system, specifically with bupe.
And before Kolodny began his work in the prison system, in 1996, France approved bupe (Suboxone) for the treatment of addiction. The current situation in France is that, along with methadone, buprenorphine is the opioid that’s causing the most damage:
https://painkills2.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/whats-the-drugopioid-epidemic-look-like-in-france/
Dr. Kolodny ranks anti-Suboxone judges like Judge Moore in a category with climate-change deniers and people who believe vaccines cause autism. “When there’s really dangerous heroin on the streets, I’d rather see Suboxone out there, even if it is being prescribed irresponsibly or is being sold by drug dealers,” he said…
And here we have Mr. Kolodny advocating for the underground Suboxone market, which really makes him look like a drug dealer. I wonder if he gets a percentage of all Suboxone sales… Or maybe he’s been promised a better job with the government or Big Pharma.
Hey, Kolodny, don’t you understand that doctors are drug dealers, too? Do you think the drugs that doctors prescribe never do any damage, never kill anyone? Perhaps you should change your name to Dr. Hypocrisy.
Under comments:
Steven A. King, M.D., Philadelphia, May 29, 2016
The issues of using buprenorphine for opioid use disorders are not as clear cut as the author appears to be making them.
Some of what Judge Moore believes is true and some of what Drs. Volkow and Kolodny say is misleading.
As a physician who specializes in pain management, I know that there are a not insignificant number patients prescribed opioids for legitimate pain complaints who end up abusing and becoming addicted to these, and although it is often reported that we’ve only become recently aware of this in fact there is research going back 25 years demonstrating this.
However, there are no studies showing that either buprenorphine or methadone are appropriate treatments for these patients. As these both provide analgesia equal to the other opioids, if these were the proper treatment for these patients then it would make sense to make them the first line opioids for pain as we would be prescribing the appropriate treatment for the problem at the same time we were prescribing the cause of the problem.
Sorry, bupe and methadone do NOT provide analgesia equal to other opioids. Yes, they help some pain patients, but their strength is more in line with, say, codeine, if that.
I’m not exactly sure what this pain doctor is trying to say, but I think pain patients will increasingly be offered bupe and methadone, whether they’ve been red-flagged for addiction or not.
All Things Chronic 