At the 7th Annual Mississippi Addiction Conference “The Basics and Beyond,” leaders in addiction treatment met in Jackson, Mississippi to listen to keynote speeches and updates in best clinical practices. Among the speakers was William S. Jacobs, Jr., M.D., who addressed the role that pain medications have had in today’s opiate overdose and addiction epidemic and new evidence-based treatment options.
“It is hard to believe that much of the current opiate addiction epidemic has come about by overprescribing and by flooding our cities with narcotic medications,” said Dr. Jacobs, Chief of Addiction Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University (GRU) and Medical Director at the Bluff Plantation in Augusta, Georgia.
As a GRU Chief and triple board certified expert in addiction medicine, anesthesiology and pain medicine, Dr. Jacobs shared best practices for evaluating and treating pain, detoxifying those addicted and monitoring patients to prevent abuse or addiction.
“Once a person is abusing their medications, mixing them with other drugs or alcohol, not taking them as prescribed, a complete evaluation by an expert in addiction medicine is needed. Many times patients know that they have developed a problem but other times they only know that the medications are not working well or at all,” added Dr. Jacobs.
