Opiate Abuse Mounts: Veterans in Crossfire

The tragic death of Prince appears to have been an overdose of opioids designed to relieve pain.  While we are still awaiting toxicology reports, it does appear the Prince has suffered from excruciating pain for quite some time and was taking ever-increasing amounts of pain-killers to deal with this problem.

Prince

At this stage, it is unclear that these drugs were prescribed or that he was self-medicating with drugs obtained ...

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Military News Highlights – Week of March 20, 2016

Found below are several news items that caught my attention this past week. I am hopeful that the titles and short commentary will encourage our readers to click on the embedded links to read more on subjects that may be of interest to them.

Drop me an email at info@sftt.org if you believe that there are other subjects that are newsworthy.

Better than a War on Drugs
Pendulums are made to swing from one side to the other. So it is for the prescribing pendulum ...

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Opioids May Not Be Good for Treating PTSD. Really?

If the devastating implications weren’t so gut-wrenching, many of us would be rolling in the aisles with laughter.   Unfortunately, Karen Seal of the San Francisco VA Medical Center has sadly concluded that “the use of opiate pain medications in those patients (veterans suffering from PTSD) is, frankly, risky.”  According the Austin Statesman, “a growing body of research shows that PTSD and powerful prescription drugs can ...

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Are Opioid Prescriptions the Right Answer for treating PTSD?

In a series of alarming reports, the V.A. and medical profession are beginning to wonder if treating PTSD with Opioid prescription drugs is the right course of action.   Referring to V.A. records, U.S. Medicine reports that “more than 141,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with non-cancer pain. The prevalence of PTSD among that group is 32%, with 19% diagnosed with other psychiatric disorders.”

Of this group, “11% ...

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