Author: The Fix

All My Friends Are Junkies
Once we switched our attention away from getting high and learned how to stay sober, we quickly realized that if we put at least one percent of the same effort it took to get trashed into other areas of our lives, the results were astronomical.

All of my friends—each and every last one of them—are junkies. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill junkie. You know the one: steals your purse and helps you look for it. No not that kind. Not even the one that bangs four bags of boy then tells you five minutes later that they’re dopesick so you help them out by splitting your shit. Not that type of junkie. I mean yeah, they meet that criteria, but I’m talking about the other type, the been-there-done-that kind of junkie.

All of my friends have been to hell and back. They’re the type of junkie that society labels as hopeless. But for whatever reason, they’ve found a way out of their living hell and have begun living and pursuing a life worthwhile, a life greater than anything imaginable. Any goal they set, anything they dream of, it comes to fruition and then some! It’s unbelievable, very encouraging, and, from my experience, it’s very contagious. Words like: seductive, attractive, inviting, enticing, alluring and captivating come to mind.

They’ve entered into a lifestyle that appears to be nothing but hope to any outsider looking in. So much so, even “normies” wonder what the fuck my friends are on. It’s next-level type shit.

I bet you’re wondering why I still refer to my friends as junkies if they no longer get fucked up. It’s a valid question. Why would someone call their friend a junkie when they have years sober? Why would someone use a word that carries such a bad connotation when describing another individual that they themselves currently see as the opposite of that word? Why the hell does Walmart only keep two check-out aisles open on a Saturday afternoon?!

To answer that first question, let’s break down the word “junkie.”

According to Webster:

Junkie

noun | junk·ie | \ ˈjəŋ-kē \
1. a narcotics peddler or addict
2. a person who gets an unusual amount of pleasure from or has an unusual amount of interest in something
Okay, that first definition sounds about right. My friends sure as hell qualify as addicts/alcoholics. They also know how to acquire and distribute their drug-of-choice quite successfully until that dreaded day comes where they break the cardinal rule, “don’t get high on your own supply.” If you’re a junkie like me, then you know we have another term for that rule: “mission impossible.”

Now, let’s take a look at what good ol’ Webby had to say in that second definition: A person who gets an unusual amount of pleasure from or has an unusual amount of interest in something. Sexy, right? Did you hear it? Did you relate when the word “unusual” appeared twice in that definition? Did something deep inside you begin to stir when the words “pleasure” and “interest” hit your shot-out way of thinking?

I hope so. If you’re fucked up the way I am, then you felt something. I also know from a personal collective experience that once my friends and I got sober, the world became our oyster. What I mean by that is, once we switched our attention away from getting high and learned how to stay sober, we quickly realized that if we put at least one percent of the same effort it took to get trashed into other areas of our lives, the results were astronomical. It’s like a one thousand percent return on our investment. Crazy, right? Sure. Sounds like bullshit? Fuck yeah it does. It took me a while to grasp it, understand it, appreciate it and then cultivate it.

When I see the word “unusual” appear in that definition I can’t help but laugh. I know that my friends and I—or any junkie I know, for that matter—are far from normal. When I think about “pleasure” and “interest,” I think about all the dreams that I had shit on in the past as a result of the bridges I burned. Now, those dreams have come back, I have goals that appear to be attainable, relationships that bring my life an overwhelming amount of joy, and opportunities to take part in unimaginable endeavors. Sound good? Sign me up!

I geek out over music. Since my money ain’t going to the dope man anymore, I’ve been able to create some really dope recovery-based music. I’m a music junkie. And I got friends that have turned their attention to their physical health and wellness, and they’re seeing amazing results. They’re fitness junkies. I got this one friend who’s got the “lick” on all the best spots to eat around town. I mean you can pick an ethnicity, voice your preference and he’s got a spot for you. My little, hipster, foodie junkie. He’s adorable.

Do you get it now? My friends and I are still junkies. We find ridiculous amounts of pleasure doing the things we love and pursuing the things that interest us. We enjoy it so much that you might call it unusual. Crazy ass ex-dopefiends turned into super-cool people.

I know we all have a million stories of where we’ve been and what we’ve done to get high and stay high. I know what it’s like to be in rehab and exchange “war stories” with the guy next to me. After a while it gets old. If you’re a repeat offender like me, then you know it gets old really fast when you check back in and hear the same shit again. It’s the same story with a different face. I get it.

Having said all that, I want to let you in on a little secret: I’ve solved my existential crisis that I’ve always run into when trying to stay sober. I never found my purpose before, that “something” that brings me an unusual amount of pleasure… until now.

It’s in these stories. It’s in the telling you, the reader, what my junkie friends and I have done, where we’ve been, what we’ve seen, what we’ve felt, how we’ve died, how we’ve lived, how we’ve found relief, how we’ve recovered, how we’ve relapsed, how we’ve come back and how we’ve survived one day at a time. If The Fix allows it, I’d love to share with you some of these “ghost stories,” as I lovingly refer to them these days. It would bring me an unusual amount of pleasure to get some of this shit off my chest and outta my head.

I want to let you into my world, tell you why “All My Friends Are Junkies” (and I’m pretty sure all your friends are, too). I want to take you through drug court, through my first time in “the rooms,” through my first love in recovery, through that heartbreak, through that first relapse after believing I’d be a one-chip-wonder. I want to take you through that probation violation, that geographical change I thought would help, and holy shit, I want to bring you to that six-month inpatient rehab I went to that turned into a 13 month stay, the place I “loved so much” that I went back for another six months. I want to tell you about the relationships I made in these places, the fun we had, the crazy cool road trips we took. I want to tell you about all the musical gigs and the junkies I met there. I feel like recovery has brought me around the world while my lifestyle of addiction brought me to the deepest darkest areas of Satan’s ass crack. I want to tell you about that too.

So for now, I’ll leave you with this: If no one told you today that they love you, fuck it, there’s always tomorrow.

Check back next week for the first Ghost Story, “A Dopeman’s Grocery List.”

View the original article at thefix.com
7 September 2018
Can Pre-Birth Opioid Exposure Lead To Learning Disorders?

A new study examined the potential link between pre-birth opioid exposure and developmental issues.

Children born to mothers using opioids may grow up to demonstrate difficulty learning, a new study has found.

The study examined the potential long-term issues for infants born to mothers who used opioids while pregnant, according to NBC News.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that one in seven children affected by a mother using opioids needed to be placed in special education classrooms for various issues, including developmental issues and speech delay. In comparison, one in 10 children who were not exposed to opioids before birth required the same.

About 7,200 children from Tennessee’s Medicaid program were involved in the study, ranging in age from 3 to 8 years old. Of those children, nearly 2,000 were born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS)—or, in simpler terms, withdrawal from opioids due to a mother’s use.

Tennessee has been greatly affected by the opioid epidemic, which is reflected in the number of infants exposed to opioids before birth. In 1999, it was one per 1,000 infants. But in 2015, it was 13 per 1,000.

Researchers said they took specific factors into account like birth weight and mother’s education and tobacco use, but that those did not change the results.

According to study co-author Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University, the results make sense, as other studies have determined that there are brain differences in children affected by opioids while in utero.

Dr. Mary-Margaret Fill, lead author and a researcher with Tennessee’s health department, tells NBC News that affected children “are definitely not doomed. There are great programs and services that exist to help these children and their families. We just have to make sure they get plugged in.”

Because the study was focused in Tennessee, it’s not clear if the results are similar in other U.S. states, and no other studies with the same focus have been conducted in the country.

However, a similar study was conducted in Australia last year, and found that children exposed to opioids before birth had worse academic scores in seventh grade in comparison to others their age. The U.S. study did not examine academic performance.

Dr. Matthew Davis, co-chair of the Opioid Task Force at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, tells the Chicago Tribune that the study results should serve as a sign that opioid use affects a wide range.

“There’s a sense that the opioid epidemic is somebody else’s problem, but it affects more than those who take the drugs,” Davis said. “I hope the study is a wake-up call, so people understand that this epidemic is a community-level, multigenerational problem that will only grow if we don’t take the proper steps to address it.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 September 2018
Marijuana's Pain-Relieving Properties To Be Studied By UCLA Researchers

“The public consumption of cannabis has already far outpaced our scientific understanding. We really desperately need to catch up.”

Thirty states and Washington D.C. have medical marijuana programs, but there has been little scientific research into the pain relieving properties of pot.

Now, however, researchers at the University of California Los Angeles are trying to change that, by conducting research into marijuana as a pain reliever.

“We’re not trying to do pro-cannabis research or anti-cannabis research,” Dr. Jeffrey Chen, director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative told NBC News. “We’re just trying to do good science.”

The initiative’s first goal will be to conduct a high-quality clinical research trial into pain relief. It will look at which types of cannabis products provide the most pain relief and whether cannabis may be able to replace opioid pain relievers for some patients.

Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the UCLA school of medicine, designed the study to test different combinations of THC, the principal psychoactive component of marijuana, and cannabidiol, an anti-inflammatory component that does not give a high. She wants to measure which “produces the most good,” she said, in terms of reducing pain and opioid use.

Studies have shown that states with medical marijuana programs have fewer opioid overdose deaths. However, there haven’t been studies that show whether pain patients are switching from opioids to medical marijuana, or studies to see how effective medical marijuana is at treating pain in individuals.

Because of this, the proposed UCLA study is “much-needed research,” according to Yuyan Shi, a health policy analyst at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the health consequences of marijuana and opioid use.

The study still needs to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and more funding is needed.

However, Chen said that more organizations and individuals are realizing the importance of studying cannabis. Because of this, the research already has funds from the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, federal and state sources, and private donors, he said.

“The public consumption of cannabis has already far outpaced our scientific understanding,” Chen said. “We really desperately need to catch up.”

Chen hopes that the pain relief study will just be the first step for the research initiative.

“While our priority is to study the therapeutic potential and health risks of cannabis on the body, brain, and mind, our mission is the interdisciplinary study of the wide-ranging health, legal, economic, and social impacts of cannabis,” he wrote in a message on the organization’s website.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
Tess Holliday On Postpartum Depression: I Wished I Could Disappear

The model has been open about her struggles with postpartum depression on Instagram.

Plus-sized model Tess Holliday opened up about her battle with postpartum depression to Cosmopolitan UK.

The 33-year-old, who launched the body positive movement (#effyourbeautystandards) in 2013, struggled with postpartum depression after giving birth to her son Bowie, which lasted from January 2017 to the spring of 2018.

“It felt like the water was boiling over and things were coming to the top again,” she recalled in a May post on Instagram. “I remember very vividly driving in the car with Bowie and I thought to myself, ‘I wish I could just disappear. I wish I could vanish.’”

Holliday also confessed on Instagram, “I’ve never had suicidal thoughts, or self harm, but the thoughts of just wanting to stop hurting and feeling helpless were new and frankly overwhelming. I’ve been open about my struggles with Postpartum Depression, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized I had extreme PPD.”

Holliday was afraid to turn to her family for help because she didn’t want to burden them. “I felt at that point like I was causing everyone around me so much pain,” she continued. “It felt like a never-ending black hole. I was so tired of hurting… I just didn’t want to be here any more.”

Yet it was with the help of her family and antidepressants that she finally got out of the black hole. “Ask for help, talk to someone, find a support group or hell, message me. You aren’t alone and you don’t need to suffer alone.”

Holliday confessed she still has tough days. “Some days are still filled with sadness, anxiety and helplessness,” she adds. “As I write this, I’m in the bath, crying to my life coach via text wondering how my life is so full of so many amazing things, but the good bits seem hard to reach… Moms are expected to ‘bounce back’ physically and emotionally. We are expected to ‘stay strong’ for the family. Yet most of us (myself included) still have days where we feel like a stranger in our bodies.”

Holliday concluded, “I’m grateful to have support in my life, friends to talk to, but it got so bad that I had to take action and by doing so it potentially saved my life.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
Paul McCartney "Saw God" During A DMT Trip

The legendary musician described a past hallucinogenic trip in a recent interview with The Sunday Times.

Former Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney, had a vision of a higher power while tripping on DMT (dimethyltryptamine), back in the Fab Four’s heyday. He described the experience, and the impact it had on him, with the Sunday Times.

“There was a gallery owner Robert Fraser, me, a couple of others. We were immediately nailed to the sofa. And I saw God, this amazing towering thing, and I was humbled,” he said.

The musician admitted that he will “cherry-pick” aspects of his spirituality, but ultimately, he says, “I do think there is something higher.”

His vision continues: “It was huge. A massive wall that I couldn’t see the top of, and I was at the bottom. And anybody else would say it’s just the drug, the hallucination, but both Robert and I were like, ‘Did you see that?’ We felt we had seen a higher thing.”

This experience would fuel the hope that he is still connected with his late loved ones: “Having lost both my parents and Linda, and having experienced people close to me dying, you often hear this from others when you say you’re missing a person so much. ‘Don’t worry,’ they say. ‘They’re here, looking down on you.’ And there’s part of you that thinks there is no proof of that. But there’s part of you that wants to believe it.”

The 76-year-old musician was never one to shy away from his drug use. In a two-minute clip available on YouTube, the singer, much younger, candidly fields a question about his use of LSD raised by a persistent reporter.

McCartney, whose latest album Egypt Station will be released on September 7, has also admitted in past interviews that he felt depressed following the break-up of The Beatles in 1970, and coped by drinking alcohol.

“I was breaking from my lifelong friends, not knowing whether I was going to continue in music. I took to the bevvies (slang for drinks). I took to a wee dram,” he said, according to Yahoo.

“It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn’t having a good time. It wasn’t working. I wanted to get back to square one, so I ended up forming Wings (his rock band formed in 1971).”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
Slash Talks Performing, Writing Music While Sober

“I found that when I got sober… my partying thing was really a matter of killing time in between things.”

Slash, who is currently enjoying a successful reunion tour with Guns N’ Roses, had a long history with substance use before finally getting sober in 2006.

The famous guitarist born Saul Hudson also has a new solo album, Living the Dream, coming out on September 21, and now that he’s writing new music and performing sober, he realizes it’s been a whole new ballgame.

“I found that when I got sober, sort of looking back from the time that I started playing up until 2006, my partying thing was really a matter of killing time in between things. I wasn’t really using when I was in the studio, I was always focused on music,” he told Loudwire. “So when I got sober, all that effort that I put into what turned into a massive addiction at that point, I took all that and just put it straight back into the music, and it wasn’t really reliant on me being buzzed, or should I say inebriated, to be able to create stuff.”

When writing the classic Guns N’ Roses songs, Slash recalled, “A lot of that material from the old days—I can pick particular songs that were definitely written under the influence, but I can pick other songs that were written under the influence of a couple beers.”

Slash confessed to Rolling Stone, “From ’86 to ’94, there was definitely not a day or a show that I was sober… I was a very functional alcoholic. When I was on tour, it’s always alcohol. I knew better than to try a [heroin] habit on the road, knowing that if things don’t go as planned, you’re gonna be sick and all that miserable shit. So, it was just alcohol that I was dealing with. Which is its own demon, but I mean, I was good with it [laughs].”

Slash has always been a workaholic, and keeping busy has been the key to his sobriety. “I think, probably I’m at my weakest if I don’t have a bunch of shit going on.”

Today, he says his sobriety has “been going well. All addicts and alcoholics have to know that it’s there… I’ve been really fortunate that I finally got to that point where I was just over it. And I haven’t had an issue since then. I haven’t had any desire to go back and do that.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
North Dakota's First Lady Shares Her Addiction Story At Recovery Event

The First Lady says she became a recovery advocate because of the stigma around addiction.

Education, advocacy and empowerment were among the key topics of discussion at Recovery Reinvented 2018, a daylong event devoted to drug and alcohol dependency in Fargo, North Dakota.

A host of speakers were featured at the event, including news anchor and recovery advocate Laurie Dhue and Addiction Policy Forum founder/CEO Jessica Hulsey Nickel, as well as a figure known to many North Dakotans, both in and out of the recovery community: Kathryn Helgaas Burgum, the state’s First Lady, who with her husband, Governor Doug Burgum, is a key sponsor of Recovery Reinvented.

Burgum is also in recovery from alcoholism and fully understands the importance of such events. “I’m very passionate about addiction because it affects me personally,” she told the Fargo-based Forum.

Prior to her marriage to Governor Burgum in 2016, Burgum was a successful human resources and marketing professional for various companies. But her alcohol dependency required even greater time and attention than her employment; a self-described “high-functioning” alcoholic, Burgum told the Forum that she was “going to work hung-over almost every day and trying to conceal that.”

Burgum sought recovery from the Mayo Clinic, but it took a relapse that lasted eight years for her to devote herself fully to gaining sobriety. “That’s really the miracle that happened for me,” she recalled.

When her husband was elected governor in a landslide victory in 2016, Burgum decided to focus on advocacy for dependency and recovery. Chief among these was Recovery Reinvented, part of an ongoing series of initiatives that operates as a non-profit in association with the Dakota Medical Foundation; the event itself is produced in partnership with the state’s Behavioral Health Division.

Its goal, as the website states, is to “eliminate the shame and stigma of addiction in North Dakota” through “proven prevention, treatment and recovery approaches.

Among the issues that Burgum supports: increased access to the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone, which will be provided, along with training in its use, to attendees at the event. Burgum also supports public-private partnerships to assist individuals in returning to society after treatment through providing them with places to live.

“There are people that are willing to spend money sober houses,” she told the Forum. “Because at some point when people start getting sober, they start paying rent. They start becoming members of the community.”

Most importantly, Burgum said that she wants to change North Dakotans’ perspective of people with dependency issues from, as the Forum noted, flawed or damaged individuals to ones with a chronic disease that needs treatment.

“Part of the reason I [got into recovery advocacy] was that there was so much stigma aroud the chronic disease of addiction, which affected me as well because I didn’t talk about it for 16 years,” she told Fargo Monthly. “I just decided that if I could help other people reach out for treatment and seek help and find recovery by talking about my experience, then I felt like it would be worthwhile and to be grateful for that opportunity.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
Sober Romance: Why We Act Like Teenagers When It Comes to Relationships

So many people rush into relationships in early recovery. This may be related to neurochemistry: we’re suddenly deprived of the substances that made us feel good and we need to find a substitute.

I’ve spent the last six and a half years of recovery wondering why I have been so emotionally immature when it comes to romantic relationships. Why have I sulked over communicating my needs? Why have I formed such insecure attachments that I wonder when I’ll see the person again before they have even left? Why have I felt so crazed and simultaneously flummoxed at my behavior? Reflecting on my relationships during my recovery, I can describe them in one word: disaster. But they’ve also been a blessing.

When I found recovery, relationships were the last thing on my mind; I could barely function. I spent most days struggling to sufficiently caffeinate myself to get out of my apartment and to a meeting. For the first few months, I lugged my 300-pound body around wondering where this elusive pink fluffy cloud was, because it certainly wasn’t on my radar.

As time progressed, my body began to recover: my liver regenerated—which is quite remarkable considering the quantity of cocaine I snorted and the four bottles of wine I drank each day—my depression lifted enough that I was able to function, and I lost weight. I was hardly experiencing the promises, but I could see that my life had improved. The fact I no longer felt compelled to drink was a miracle in itself.

Sufficiently recovered—or so I naively thought—I looked for romantic distraction in the rooms. A smile from someone at the break would elicit a rush of feel-good hormones. I wonder if they like me? would play through my mind (well, that’s the PG version I’m willing to share, but you get the picture). Needless to say, this didn’t end well.

I ignored the guidance to stay single for a year after finding recovery, because in my mind I was thinking: I’m a 32-year-old woman. Why shouldn’t I date? I’m an adult! Off I went and dated, just like every other person in the room because—let’s face it—few people actually adhere to that rule!

And so I chose some lovely chaps from that swimming pool of dysfunction, Narcotics Anonymous. Promises that they’d treat me right, and that they really liked me, were exactly that: just promises. Even though I expressed my desire for a relationship over just messing around, my experience was that once these guys got what they wanted, they were off. Wondering what was wrong with me—and playing the victim role really well—I’d move on to the next dude.

I couldn’t see until much later in my recovery why I was so terrible at picking a suitable partner. I was blind to my part in these encounters and all of the emotional baggage I brought to them. I’d often act like a teenager: sulking, gaslighting, and holding the person emotionally hostage. I was incapable of adequately and maturely communicating my needs, or of listening and hearing theirs.

It took several years of recovery to unpack my insecurities around attachment and the trauma I had suffered that made forming a healthy attachment nearly impossible. I can’t imagine many people would want a relationship with a needy, insecure, obsessive woman. And that wasn’t helped by my choices: people who were completely avoidant. It was never going to work.

Keen to explore why we act this way in early recovery, I asked recovery scientist Austin Brown about it. He explained that we have to look at our inclination to use external objects, or people, to provide instant changes in mood—just like we experienced with drugs. Also, Austin says, many of the social developmental benchmarks we pass from childhood to adulthood are slowed by active use.

“The early stages of romance offer a thrill and an escape,” he goes on. “In fact, they operate on many of the same pleasure pathways as our substances used to. One interesting phenomenon I have noted in clinical work is the almost overwhelming desire to get into a relationship that occurs when people initially get into recovery. To me, this is likely a neurochemistry issue; a starvation of the stuff that makes us feel good. So, we act on it, having neither the maturity or the self-awareness that is required for a complex adult human relationship.”

Explaining why we act so immaturely in relationships, Austin says, “If we started using as teens, emotionally we are still there those first few months. This is a well-known facet of the disorder. But we want—and therefore think we are ready for—a relationship, often before we even get out of treatment, have a stable job, or even have a place to live. Entering into any relationship under those conditions is statistically unlikely to succeed.”

About our inability to communicate, Austin says, “At a more scientific level we are talking about the ability to identify AND verbalize our emotional states. Often all we know are ‘want’ and ‘relief’ when we come into recovery. Those are woefully short-sighted emotional states when it comes to equitable human relationships and partnerships. It’s like bringing a juice box to a gunfight.”

The upside is that if we work hard to grow in recovery, we can mature fairly quickly. “I usually calculate about a year to six months of growth per every month of recovery. If we started using 12 years ago, it takes us at least a year to emotionally resemble our peers. Might even take two, depending on how hard we work at it,” he says.

Even though we think we might be ready for a relationship after we’ve achieved a few weeks of recovery, Austin says, we might want to be cautious. “Unfortunately, early recovery relationships slow our emotional maturation as well, just like substances,” he says. “If someone else can give us a sense of relief, why do all the hard work to achieve emotional growth? Early-recovery relationships prolong our process of healing and can often throw our recovery off disastrously, sometimes even to the point of a return to use and even death. So, it is quite serious business, and yet no one really talks about it in any tangible or helpful way.”

“Personally,” he goes on to say, “I have seen relationships in early recovery ruin more lives than substances themselves. Why relational health isn’t the central focus of early recovery support is frankly beyond me.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
Senate Considers Opioid Crisis Bill, But Critics Say It Isn’t Enough

“A little drama for little substance,” said one addiction advocate familiar with the bill.

The Senate is preparing to pass a bill to address the opioid epidemic, but critics say that the legislation skirts around the most important — and contentious — issues that could help change the way that opioid addiction is handled.

“A little drama for little substance,” one addiction advocate familiar with the bill told STAT News.

The bill addresses treatment and prevention, according to a copy reviewed by STAT. There are provisions that will better equip law enforcement to detect fentanyl being shipped in the mail system and that will help develop a have a better disposal system for unused opioids, in order to reduce the amount of opioids on the street. In addition, there are provisions to expand treatment by easing access to medication-assisted treatment with buprenorphine, training doctors to screen for substance use disorder and increasing access to treatment via telemedicine.

However, treatment advocates say that the bill will do little to affect how treatment is delivered because it does not take enough bold steps to change the status quo.

“Overdose rates continue to rise, and our response is still falling short given the mammoth size of the problem,” said Andrew Kessler, the founder of Slingshot Solutions, a behavioral health consulting group. “We are in the early phases of our response to this epidemic, and I can only hope that this bill is the first of many we can pass.”

One big change that has a chance of passing is repealing the IMD exclusion, which prevents treatment centers with more than 16 beds from receiving Medicaid payments.

An opioid response bill passed in June repealed the exclusion, but only for treatment for opioid and cocaine addiction.

Despite the fact that the current Senate bill doesn’t mention the exclusion, Ohio Senator Rob Portman said that he is hopeful a repeal will be included in the final bill. He said that leadership has agreed on the repeal, but could not gather enough votes.

“We’ve worked out an agreement that I think most leadership on both sides agree with, but we weren’t able to get the signoff from everybody,” Portman said.

The Senate bill also includes a call for the development of best practices in disclosing a patient’s history with substance abuse. The House bill would allow a history of addiction treatment to be disclosed without a patient’s expressed permission, but Senate lawmakers are concerned that this could lead to breaches of privacy and stigma.

With the coming November election, many lawmakers are hesitant to vote on anything controversial, meaning that the bill may languish. However, some Senators are pushing to make sure it gets a vote this month.

“As soon as both parties agree, we can have a roll call vote next week. When we do that, it’ll get virtually unanimous support, and then we’ll work with the House and put the bills together,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who has spearheaded the bill.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 September 2018
Older Americans Sorely Under-Informed About Opioid Risks

A new poll uncovered a major lack of communication between doctors and their older patients who use opioids.

A new poll from the University of Michigan involved a nationally representative sample of 2,000 Americans between ages 50 to 80.

According to The Atlantic, the results of the poll were an indication of why elderly patients at high risk of opioid overdose: 40% aid their doctor’s did not speak to them about opioid side effects or how to decide when to cut back on the medication.

SAMHSA reports that the population of those 65 and older expected to use opioids will most likely double between 2004 and 2020.

The University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging asked the patients what their health-care providers discussed when prescribing opioid medication to them.

Of the responders, 589 said they had filled an opioid prescription. While they indicated that they knew how often to take the medication, the majority said their doctors or pharmacists did not address the risk of addiction, the risk of overdose, or what to do with excess pills.

Interestingly, the poll also showed that respondents overwhelmingly support policies that require providers to receive special training for opioid prescribing, as well as to review prescription records and requiring patients to disclose prior opioid medication.

The populous of the poll include baby boomers (which CNN defines as people born from 1946 to 1964). Sheila Vakharia, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, told The Atlantic that this group “used alcohol and other drugs at higher rates compared to other generations of older people that have preceded them, which means these same people are at higher risk of overdose and adverse effects because they may be drinking a little bit more often and a little heavier than some folks who are in their 80s.”

Doctors can sometimes find it difficult to communicate effectively with their older patients for a variety of reasons. Many doctors are overextended, “burnt out,” and simply don’t have enough time with each individual patient. In addition, doctors often don’t think patients’ of a certain age are at risk for addiction, Vakharia mentioned.

“The messages that doctors give to patients are largely dictated by how they perceive patients,” Vakharia told The Atlantic. “You don’t often see the elderly as a population at risk for developing substance-use disorders.”

Indeed, older patients who use opioids are not only at risk for addiction, but they are at a higher risk of overdose death than the younger population.

View the original article at thefix.com

5 September 2018