Relaxing patient privacy protections will harm people with addiction The nation is in the midst of a staggering opioid epidemic. Over 115 people die from an overdose each day – and all signs indicate that the problem is getting worse.Learn More   Addiction builds in the brain over time, new research shows There are certain risk factors that can contribute to a person’s struggle with addiction, including genetic predispositions, environmental influences, poor coping methods, and behavioral issues.Learn More   Now Hiring: A Company Offers Drug Treatment And A Job To Addicted Applicants It's hard enough for employers to find workers to fill open jobs these days, but on top of it, many prospective hires are failing drug tests. Learn More   Opioid Use Hasn't Declined In The Last Decade Despite Addiction Crisis Addiction to prescription opioids like oxycodone has risen so rapidly in the last decade that now an average of...

Submitted by CF Caldwell (Dr. Caldwell is former Chair of the Middlesex County Human Services Advisory Board) For me, the opioid, heroin, and alcohol addiction, all addictions, are a manifestation of a kind of conditioning of the US population. The beginnings were the advent of patent drug administration from our physicians. Physicians have been trained via drug company support in medical schools. Physicians have learned to diagnose any malady – a good thing – and to ‘treat’ any malady with a corresponding, appropriate drug – not always good. Therefore, we have come to believe that any malady responds to a drug, good or bad. That is the conditioning. Prior to this onslaught of patent drug interventions, there were non-drug remedies. Native Americans had them, as did much of the populations in rural America, where the paucity of main-steam medical care exists. (Certainly, the Asian countries had remedies, sans patent drugs, as...

  World's first trials of MDMA to treat alcohol addiction set to begin Imperial College London scientists expect to give first dose in the next two months alongside psychotherapy.Learn More Alcohol-related deaths will take 'decades' to reduce It will take decades to see the number of alcohol-related deaths fall significantly, a charity has warned. Learn More   Survey reveals prevalence of marijuana and alcohol use among drivers In just seven years, the number of marijuana-positive drivers increased 50 percent, according to the 2013-2014 National Roadside Survey of Alcohol & Drug Use by Drivers. On the flip side, the percentage of alcohol-positive drivers decreased 77 percent between 1973 and 2013-2014.Learn More   Calling it ‘brain disease’ makes addiction harder to treat AT LAST official count, in 2015, over 33,000 people have died from opioid painkillers, heroin, and fentanyl — twice the number killed by guns — and the number of fatalities is...