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The business of addiction treatment and health care
Whether it’s you suffering with addiction or a loved one, it’s easy to forget that at least in this country, treating the sick is a cash-money-business. This is true for health-care as well as for addiction treatment, and as the polls right before the passage of the recent health-care reform suggest, enough Americans like it…
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Helping Addicts with medications for cravings
If we could make it so drug addicts could stop craving the substances that have brought them to their knees, would relapse rates drop and addiction-treatment success rates soar? I sure hope so! Medications that stop cravings? I’ve already written about a study by the renowned addiction researcher Barry Everitt showing that medications could be…
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A million ways to treat an addict
When I was still attending my addiction counseling classes at UCLA, we often discussed the many different tools now available when treating drug abuse (CBT, 12 step, medications, rapid detox, etc.). Still, most of the class members focused on how many of these don’t work with everyone and how some have actually resulted in problems…