Experts on drug addiction treatment and research will convene on the campus of the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University April 6-7 for the 2015 Annual Masters in Addiction Medicine Conference and Think Tank. These addiction medicine physicians will present the latest findings and best practices to educate physicians, therapists and others serving in detox and recovery treatment during this event which will be streamed live to a national audience. Presenters include:
- William S. Jacobs, M.D., 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
- Dan Angres, M.D., Medical Director, Positive Sobriety Institute, Chief Medical Officer, RiverMend Health LLC, Adjunct Professor at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
- Robert L. DuPont, M.D., Founding Director National Institute on Drugs and Alcohol (NIDA) and Former White House Drug Czar
- Paul Earley, MD, FASAM, Georgia Physicians Health Program
- Michel Sucher, MD, FASAM, FACEP, Medical Director of the Monitored Aftercare Programs for the Arizona Medical Board, the Arizona State Board of Dental Examiners, and the State Bar of Arizona
- Scott Hambleton, MD, Medical Director, Mississippi Physicians Health Program
- Roland W. Gray, MD, Medical Director, Tennessee Medical Foundation’s Physicians Health Program
“Today’s deadly heroin epidemic has been fueled by a vast increase in prescription of opioids for chronic pain among outpatients over the last two decades. Many Americans who use prescription opioids nonmedically shift to using heroin because it is cheaper and more easily available. This has created a heroin epidemic unlike the heroin epidemic in the 1970s which was focused on impoverished urban men, often with criminal records. This time the typical heroin addict is far more likely to be white, female and to live in suburban or rural areas. The hallmark of this epidemic is the sharp rise in heroin overdoses,” comments Dr. DuPont.
“Much of the current opiate addiction epidemic has come about by overprescribing and by flooding our cities with narcotic medications,” notes Dr. Jacobs. “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,” Jacobs adds.
