This Week in Addiction News

First up, the link I was most excited to see this week: a collection of expert opinions on how the new healthcare law will affect people with substance abuse problems and addictions. Looks like many physicians in the field, myself included, are thrilled at the prospects of more of our patients getting the care they need.

I’ve been doing some reading about harm reduction this week. Some people seem to think it is our best bet for reducing the devastating impact of drugs on society. One of the rallying cries of the ‘harm reduction’ movement is fighting stigma (warning! slightly graphic images), and fighting stigma is something I can always get behind. On a related note, one blogger found it extremely easy to obtain synthetic drugs; so is harm reduction a better shot than trying (and failing) to cut off all public access to these chemicals?

Here’s a brief but fascinating note that some patients find the addiction treatment model ‘too medical’, and that this is why the addiction field ‘guards itself from the encroaching medical model’. Personally, while the medical model can’t fix all problems for all people, I don’t think we’re erring on the side of ‘too medical’. (That may be true in other mental health-related fields, but I don’t think it’s true of addiction.) Read that post, check out those links, and tell us what you think in the comments!

Don’t forget to stay tuned to our office Twitter feed to get links, updates, and news about our office and the world of addiction treatment. Have a great weekend!