Short spoken video introducing the Addiction Stabilization Unit and framing opioid use disorder and alcohol use disorder as chronic brain diseases. The speaker emphasizes that these conditions are not moral choices, cites neuroimaging evidence of chronic brain changes, notes effective medications exist, and directs listeners to the Addiction Stabilization Unit at JFK North overseen by Dr. Keen for specialty care.
Chapters
Let's talk about the Addiction Stabilization Unit, opioid use disorder, alcohol abuse, and some of these other substance use disorders. I know we run on these people over and over again, and historically, I know it can cause a little frustration from us because we wonder, why are they not getting better? Well, there's been a real seismic shift in medicine to understand that not only is this not a choice that patients are making, we see on advanced neuroimaging, there's actually chronic changes in the brain. Once people develop these diseases of either alcohol abuse or substance use disorder, opioid use disorder, they can no longer choose to not have this disease, just like people with diabetes can't choose to not have diabetes anymore. And when you think about it, is there any other disease that's chronic and life threatening where you expect the patient to take nothing? So really, we've been looking at this from the wrong, wrong lens in medicine, and it turns out there's actually highly effective medications that patients with both opioid use disorder and alcohol use disorder can be on where we can get many of these patients to long term good recovery. We do have one facility in our counties now treating patients for this. In fact, Dr. Keen, one of our medical directors, is overseeing it right at JFK North. So if you have somebody who has one of these diseases, consider taking them to the Addiction Stabilization Unit where they can get this subspecialty care, basically sort of cutting edge stuff where we're actually finally realizing how we can get these patients to good health.
