A troubled California database that allows doctors to check which patients are already receiving potentially addictive prescriptions is currently being relaunched. But one doctor argues that the state needs to do far more to stem prescription drug deaths than simply revamp CURES.
Maia Szalavitz offers blunt advice for folks covering addiction and drug use: "Think critically. Don't be the readers' nanny. You aren't there to send 'the right message.'"
How many times do you see pain patients who aren’t addicted represented in stories about prescription painkillers? Maia Szalavitz weighs in.
In the past, the study of addiction has often been focused on substances — like heroin, marijuana and alcohol. But experts in the field now believe that addiction begins with the “reward circuitry” in the brain rather than the substances themselves.
