addiction

A Crisis With Scant Data: States Move To Count Drug-Dependent Babies

2:57pm March 28, 2016

by Ben Allen

Getting good information is critical to figuring out where resources need to go to treat newborns dependent on opioids. Pennsylvania relies on old and incomplete statistics, but that may be changing.

Amanda Hensley with her daughter, Valencia. Hensley says several hospitals and clinics she contacted were reluctant to help her quit her opioid habit. "Nobody wants to touch a pregnant woman with an addiction issue."

Pregnant And Addicted: The Tough Road To Family Health

1:17pm March 28, 2016

by Sarah Jane Tribble

Guilt still haunts a new mother who was addicted to opioids when she got pregnant. Once she was ready to ask for help, treatment programs that could handle her complicated pregnancy were hard to find.

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Doctors are trying to slowly wean Lexi from her dependence on methadone. She's just 2 weeks old. Under a doctor's advice, her mom took methadone while pregnant, to help kick a heroin habit.

Tiny Opioid Patients Need Help Easing Into Life

4:07pm March 25, 2016

by Kristin Gourlay

More babies are being born dependent on opioids. The good news is they can safely be weaned from the drug. But there is little research on which medical treatment is best, or on the long-term effects.

Oxycodone is one of the opioids that the FDA wants relabeled to emphasize risks.

Health & Safety

FDA Requires Strong New Safety Warnings For Opioids

5:16pm March 22, 2016

by Rob Stein

The Food and Drug Administration is demanding that the instructions for the most commonly prescribed opioids include so-called black box warnings about dangers of abuse, misuse, overdose and death.

Science

Medical Cocaine Addiction Treatment Being Developed by Winston-Salem Entrepreneur

11:34am March 11, 2016

by Shawn Fitzmaurice

SciWorks Radio is a production of 88.5 WFDD and SciWorks, the Science Center and Envir

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An Addict, Now Clean, Discusses Needle Exchanges And 'Hope After Heroin'

3:38pm March 08, 2016

At the height of her addiction to heroin, Tracey Helton Mitchell lived in an alley and sold her body. Now she works as an addiction specialist helping others. Her new memoir is The Big Fix.

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Dr. Jessie Gaeta, chief medical officer of Health Care for the Homeless at Boston Medical Center, stands in a conference room that will soon be converted to a place where patients high on heroin or other drugs can be safely monitored.

Boston's Heroin Users Will Soon Get A Safer Place To Be High

9:58am March 01, 2016

by Martha Bebinger

Set to open within a few weeks, the room will not be a place to inject drugs or get high, say health providers. Instead, a nurse will monitor heroin users as they come down from the drug's effects.

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"The people that I know who have lost spouses, children, some of them are so ashamed that they wouldn't even acknowledge it as a cause of death," says A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute.

Treating Addiction As A Chronic Disease

4:26pm February 25, 2016

by NPR Staff

Reframing addiction as a chronic illness would help people get appropriate treatment and benefit the health care system, says A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute.

Can Baltimore Provide Addiction Treatment On Demand?

5:43pm February 24, 2016

Andrea Towson, who has used heroin off and on for 30 years, is eager to get treatment. "I just want to wake up and eat breakfast and be normal, no matter what that might be," she says.

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Burnout and low pay can make it tough to retain counselors in the field of addiction services. "You take on your clients' pain," explains one former counselor.

Shortage Of Addiction Counselors Further Strained By Opioid Epidemic

4:30pm February 24, 2016

by Emily Corwin

Counselors in the field of substance abuse rehabilitation earn roughly $40,000 a year, surveys show, and the work can be emotionally draining. Employee turnover is high, and likely to get worse.

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