My Story: Gil
Gil shares his story
My Story: Susan
Susan shares her story
My Story Matters
In February of 2013, I began a new career as an interventionist and street outreach employee. I had previously been an emergency dispatcher for 8 years and a part-time police officer for 2 years. This new opportunity was quite a pay cut for me but my dream position. I would be outside all day, responding More Info »
Maximizing Safety with Methadone & Other Opioids
Opioids provide life-saving analgesia for the millions of Americans who suffer with chronic pain, yet overdose deaths are rising at an alarming rate, with methadone implicated to a disproportionate degree [Paulozzi et al. 2006; Webster 2005; Warner et al. 2009]. Methadone deaths increased almost seven-fold from 790 in 1999 to 5,420 in 2006, rising faster More Info »
Oral Methadone Dosing for Chronic Pain: A Practitioner’s Guide
Methadone has emerged as a good choice for the management of cancer pain and chronic non-cancer pain both as a first-line medication and as a replacement opioid. Particular cautions must be observed as methadone’s pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics are unique among opioids. Milligram for milligram, however, methadone is much more powerful than morphine, although there is More Info »
Commonsense Opioid-Risk Management in Chronic Noncancer Pain: A Clinician’s Perspective
Chronic noncancer pain (CNP) is a serious and likely undertreated public health problem. In a 2005 survey, 19% of US adults reported chronic pain and 34% reported recurrent pain [Kuehn 2007]. The annual costs of pain-related healthcare, litigation, and compensation are estimated at $100 billion in the United States alone [Sinatra 2006]. While opioids have More Info »
Pain in Opioid-Addicted Patients Entering Addiction Treatment
Pain and addiction share some common physiologic pathways in the brain, especially those involving opioids, and each may affect the other. That is, the presence of pain may influence the development and course of opioid addiction, and vice versa (Compton and Gebhart 2003). These interactions may complicate therapy for opioid addiction. For example, opioid-addicted persons More Info »
Methadone Cardiac Concerns
Some patients in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) programs may have conditions or behaviors associated with increased risks of arrhythmia, including: abuse of cardiotoxic substances, cardiovascular disease, electrolyte imbalances, and prescribed medications that may foster cardiac repolarization disturbances. Furthermore, recent data suggest that in some individuals methadone – alone or, more commonly, in combination with other More Info »
Methadone-Drug Interactions (Medications, illicit drugs, & other substances)
Each year in the U.S. there are innumerable adverse drug reactions, broadly defined as any unexpected, unintended, undesired, or excessive response to a medicine. Such reactions may require discontinuing or changing medication therapy. Furthermore, greater than 2 million of those are serious reactions resulting in hospitalization and/or permanent disability, and there are more than 100,000 More Info »
Patient Instructions Handout: Safely Taking Oxycodone
Most patients and their families or caregivers find the medication information provided by pharmacies, or product package inserts (if provided), difficult to read and understand. Hence, they are of little help as a safety measure. Opioid medications must especially be safeguarded by patients. Recent data suggest that teenage pilferage and illicit use of prescription opioids More Info »