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Treating alcohol withdrawal with benzodiazepines – Safe if mindful
Contributing co-author: Andrew Chen Alcohol withdrawal can be extremely unpleasant (see here for an overview). Symptoms vary from person to person, but most people will experience some negative symptoms of alcohol withdrawal if they try to stop drinking after long term use. Mild to moderate symptoms include headache, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, rapid heart rate, abnormal…
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Opioid prescription overdose and abuse – Staying safe while reducing pain
A new article just published in JAMA (see here) reports a strong relationship between high-dose opiate prescribing and accidental overdose deaths. The authors focused on a sample of Veterans and found that those prescribed more than 50mg of morphine per day, or the equivalent of other opiate drugs, we much more likely to die of…
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Brittany Murphy dead at 32 – Anemia, pneumonia, and yes, drugs…
Toxicology update Well, it seems the toxicology reports are in and Brittany’s death was, at least partially, caused by her taking of multiple prescription drugs. Still, it seems that she was trying to medicate a host of conditions brought on by her underlying anemia and pneumonia. It’s sad to think that this death could have…